tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31881219270317357202018-03-06T08:55:19.805-08:00The Debonair DirtbagOn the Ubiquitous Lightness of BumhoodBumpkin Wolfgangnoreply@blogger.comBlogger25125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-25634073851366529652014-04-02T09:53:00.002-07:002014-04-02T09:53:29.271-07:00Tamer Pursuits<b>Melbourne, Victoria</b><br /><br />I've been having really good luck with airplane seating arrangements.<br /><br />From Kuala Lumpur to Melbourne, Alex and I were seated next to Stephen, an energetic man of about fifty who owned a decorating company in Victoria. I'd had the audacity to ask Stephen a lot of frivolous, covetous questions about how he managed to get a brownie from the flight attendant even though they weren't on the menu; this had proven to be a good move on my part, as he was awesome, and we spent the rest of our flight rambling at each other about the cultural and political absurdities of our respective countries.<br /><br />He offered us a ride--which was fantastically lucky for us, since we'd arrived at around 2:00 a.m. and were thinking our only option would be to hire a cab--then, after a rather amusing series of trivial setbacks, handed us a card saying to let him know if we wanted to get a coffee or wound up needing an alternative place to stay, and warily left us in front of a dark and unassuming warehouse facade in Coburg as per our request [and repeated assurances that, yes, we were at the right place, and yes, we knew the people who lived there].<br /><br />Since then, I've gone on one other flight, from Adelaide to Melbourne [having previously taken the train from Melbourne to Adelaide--aboard which I was probably the only passenger under sixty, and wound up making a throng of very sweet and inquisitive octogenarian friends who were completely intrigued by this girl dressed in fluorescent clothes she found in Thailand, and was subsequently offered well-wishes and blown kisses and vague grandma-esque insistences that I ought to visit their town by about fifteen of them upon disembarkation], during which a flight attendant handed me a flirtatious the-seat-next-to-me-is-empty-if-you-want-to-come-take-it note from a spiffy admirer about whom I knew nothing except that he was tall, dark, and from Texas, but regrettably didn't wind up rewarding this admittedly charming gesture [sorry, bro] because by that point I was already enmeshed in a fantastic conversation with a one of the most interesting guys I've met in a while. We talked about Burning Man [a given when you both realize you've both been], travelling adventures [including his experience playing music and doing a peyote ceremony up in the foothills near a remote Mexican village, and being working with locals to open up a restaurant in Indonesia], a new wave of surreal, transcendently immersive "performance art", and so on. The one-hour flight suffered a two-hour delay; the two of us drank airplane wine and carried on, not minding a bit, and once again I was spared the necessity of transit fares and offered a ride home.<br /><br />Anyway, back to that dark warehouse in Coburg.<br /><br />Getting in required stepping gingerly through a hole in one fence, ducking under a hole in another, and heading up some stairs sprinkled liberally in broken glass, which had recently occupied the now-broken pane in the door of the loft we'd get to stay in. I was delighted--something about having to sneak in in the dead of night just pumped my nads.<br /><br />Inside was a large bed [which, after the cheap-as-shit-but-consequently-shittily-uncomfortable three-day journey from Ko Tao, rendered me almost psychotically excited even in my exhaustion] with a cheery note from Alex's friend Tim, pointing out where we could find a clean towel and sheets hanging to dry, and that there was a particular surprise for us hidden in the room [which we found--and which I'm keeping a secret]. The room was strewn with boxing gear and an assortment of books that demonstrated [in my opinion] very good taste on part of their owner. On one wall hung a large, aquatic-patterned sheet to encourage privacy and insulation. It was perfect.<br /><br />Funnily enough, that was two weeks ago, and I still haven't met this guy whose bed we're staying in.<br /><br />As for the place, Reclamation Artists Warehouse is still in its infancy--mostly an empty space, though intended to become something of an industrial arts workshop/party venue [not unlike the Generator near Reno, which I also got to see--and help fix up--during its bare-bones infancy and which is now one of the coolest places in America, if you ask me].<br /><br />Ever since reading <i>Down Under</i>&nbsp;I've been on a mission to overload myself with information and see how much I can manage to remember. Combine this with how expensive Melbourne is [particularly compared to Thailand], and with its saving grace of free museums, and you can easily guess where I've been spending a sizeable chunk of my free time. I visited the NGV International <i>alone </i>on three different days before deciding I'd had enough of looking at really old things.<br /><br />Otherwise, there's nothing too crazy for me to report just yet, as I've spent much of my time here focused on freelancing and haven't been able to cut loose and go on a real adventure [outside the bounds of conventional wandering, academic tourism, gastronomical overindulgence].<br /><br />There've been some good nights with new friends.<br /><br />On one of our first nights we were invited out by Adrian, the first photographer I've shot with in Australia, and treated to drinks on a rooftop bar rife with some really personable, easygoing people exhibiting varying degrees of artsy-fartsiness [I went home with an illustrator's drawing of a fish that had been inspired by a face I'd made], Alex and I left with a couple of art models, for a free Cat Empire show at Federation Square, and eventually we wound up drinking wine under a bridge by the river amidst several hippie types, all seeking refuge from the sudden rain [and all being barked at by rather unimposing cops as soon as the rain cleared].<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kHKYhRIirZc/Uzw790LI7XI/AAAAAAAAAOc/bBsUL18PnQs/s1600/F7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kHKYhRIirZc/Uzw790LI7XI/AAAAAAAAAOc/bBsUL18PnQs/s1600/F7.jpg" height="212" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">From my shoot with Adrian in Melbourne</td></tr></tbody></table>Similarly, last night we successfully located what is undoubtedly the best ice cream place in Melbourne, followed by a contender for best cocktail bars I've been to in my life [which we only sought out because its name is also my Chinese name--we didn't even know it was a bar], followed by the swank apartment balcony of a lovely and hilarious Kiwi couple whom Alex had met a couple years prior in New Zealand, and who kept giving us wine and shots and making us laugh. The next day we nursed our consequent hangovers by seeking out the best pies in Melbourne.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2F-tAL2ZDgk/Uzw8AL7DxBI/AAAAAAAAAOo/XbaLE-dvnzI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-04-01+at+6.07.25+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2F-tAL2ZDgk/Uzw8AL7DxBI/AAAAAAAAAOo/XbaLE-dvnzI/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-04-01+at+6.07.25+pm.png" height="320" width="318" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rooftop bar with Theresa</td></tr></tbody></table>In case you haven't gathered by now, Melbourne's full of good things to put in one's mouth.<br /><br />And so on. Presently I'm not inspired to play storytime-dress-up and give some of my nights here the fully quixotic narratives they truly warrant...but I'm okay with that.<br /><br />Instead, you can have a storytime-dress-up iPhone photo taken by Theresa, a fellow American model/traveller/etc. Lately the only photos I have are the ones other people take...which is something I probably ought to remedy...<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AW7PmyBB9Xg/Uzw8AWQ1PpI/AAAAAAAAAOk/T4_8gJpCvak/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-04-01+at+6.07.43+pm.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-AW7PmyBB9Xg/Uzw8AWQ1PpI/AAAAAAAAAOk/T4_8gJpCvak/s1600/Screen+Shot+2014-04-01+at+6.07.43+pm.png" height="320" width="318" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">Disoriented in an exhibit at the rather eclectic NGV Australia. Not to be confused with the NGV International, where I essentially lived for three days.</td></tr></tbody></table>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-10707491548084230222014-03-29T08:36:00.002-07:002014-04-02T08:55:19.130-07:00Recap from the Land of Oz<b>Melbourne, Victoria</b><br /><br />All right. Hi Internet, it's been a while.<br /><br />Oh, also, yeah. I'm in Australia now. Surprise! Will stave off going into <i>why</i>&nbsp;for now, but so it is. Assuredly it's a good and happy thing, though.<br /><br />I'm going to try an exercise in brevity [which is clearly not my strong suit] by summarizing the rest of my journey up using one sentence per change-of-sleeping-space [rather than change-of-place, as Koh Tao deserves more coverage seeing as how I spent weeks there], probably cheating a bit via the use of em-dashes, parenthetical clauses that've I arbitrarily refused to put in actual (parentheses) since someone told me I had to--and possibly also cheating thoroughly and unambiguously through the use of semicolons--in usual sloppy-overkill fashion.<br /><br />Vang Vieng, Lao PDR &gt;--bus--&gt;<b> Vientiane, Lao PDR</b><br /><br />Everyone who claims this city is in any way particularly worth visiting is either being paid to do so or has no semblance of taste [or was lucky enough to stumble into experiences uncommonly serendipitous for the area--granted, I've got a soft spot for places like Fargo, ND for such reasons], and at any rate is likely engaging in some twisted form of anti-libel, as Lao's capital is essentially just as soulless and culture-less as any American capital city, only Asian--in the vein of Albany or Sacramento [though, again, I have reasons to visit both places, those reasons mainly being friends who can't or befuddlingly won't relocate to greener pastures]--rife with palpable tones of universal resentment and mistrust, as illustrated by guesthouses' flamboyantly paranoid policies, and an excess of devoutly ethnocentric fellow travellers who beg the question, "What are <i>you</i>&nbsp;doing so far from home?" or otherwise travellers irritatedly biding their time until the next available flight/bus/train/wheelbarrow could deliver them from this trap that their usually-handy guidebook or Google search results betrayed them into thinking was worth a stop.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ued36ACpcl0/UzbhqQn5zJI/AAAAAAAAAOA/fCshS_4M_lw/s1600/IMG_0772.CR2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ued36ACpcl0/UzbhqQn5zJI/AAAAAAAAAOA/fCshS_4M_lw/s1600/IMG_0772.CR2" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Instead of putting up a photo from Vientiane [because I didn't bother taking any], here's a random back street in Luang Prabang, a place that doesn't know how to be ugly anywhere.</td></tr></tbody></table>Vientiane, Lao PDR &gt;--train--&gt; Nong Khai, Thailand &gt;--train--&gt; <b>Bangkok, Thailand</b><br /><br />In a surreal homecoming that showed me just how much I'd adapted and learned in a few weeks, this same city that a month ago completely overtaxed my senses suddenly feels comfortable, laden with ass-corrodingly clean bathrooms [particularly in Terminal 21, which, despite being a mall, is definitely a place worth a poke-around if you're holed up in the city during a long break between trains], and almost ludicrous in its ease of navigation.<br /><br />Bangkok, Thailand &gt;--train--&gt; Chumphon, Thailand &gt;--bus--boat--&gt; <b>Koh Tao, Thailand</b><br /><b><br /></b>A.<b> The Campsite</b><br /><br />After a first night of socially-oversaturated partying, [which involved a lot of incredulous laughing and belligerence on my part: "Where ARE we? That's not really the ocean right over there--it's just a hokey backdrop. Fucking two hundred <i>baht</i>&nbsp;for one goddamn ripoff balloonful of hippie crack?!...ehh, I'll take three,"] spent my many days high above the populated corners of the island, hanging out at a campground-slash-bar-slash-festival-ground in the making [or would-be-in-the-making if not for interpersonal politics] wandering aimlessly and endlessly around the island, snorkelling through what was likely pulverized human excrement [the better to see benign-albeit-still-intimidating sharks--a fair trade-off in my opinion], reading, examining critters [most notably giant geckos, ant lions, and whip scorpions], and having psychologically-arduous-but-not-entirely-unproductive conversations with Alex about our morphing goals and dreams and consciences and self-concepts and all that shit.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sBWxn6vvP4k/Uzbibrlf14I/AAAAAAAAAOI/SB0Tc9uFoMc/s1600/IMG_0780.CR2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sBWxn6vvP4k/Uzbibrlf14I/AAAAAAAAAOI/SB0Tc9uFoMc/s1600/IMG_0780.CR2" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Home up on a hill. Incidentally, the girl in the photo is not me [she's a Swede named Sandra] but serves as an apt placeholder [as I own an identical-looking shirt], anyway.</td></tr></tbody></table>B. <b>Baan Suan Ta</b><br /><br />Opted to get my Advanced Open Water scuba cert on the cheap and found that, in this instance, you definitely get what you pay for: i.e., an instructor who waves you off when you let him know you're almost out of air because he's too busy tinkering with his GoPro and not getting paid enough to give a fuck, then being made the butt of sexual jokes by all the <i>other</i>&nbsp;instructors on the boat who assume that just because they're speaking in Portugese or French that you can't understand mimed hanky-panky--granted, it's hard to stay grumpy after days of diving around reefs rife with schools of great barracuda, pufferfish, fluorescent parrotfish, butterfly fish, wonky-looking trigger fish, blue-spotted rays, and bioluminescent plankton at night.<br /><br />C. <b>Save Bungalows</b><br /><br />My last, and best, leg of island life--quirky and consummate and dense, but strangely wholesome--staying in an odd tile-lined basement room across from the beach in Ban Mae Haad owned by a guy who makes reusable condoms, full of chance run-ins with Europeans who instantly felt like long-time friends [and some less-relatable-but-unaffectedly-hilarious characters who seemed almost to have come into my life purely for my amusement], getting ravaged by territorial fish while snorkelling incognito-nude around a huge shipwreck, my one and only traipse around the infamous Sairee [Mae Haad wins, in my book], vignettes of absurdity [e.g., being heckled late at night by taxi drivers using three-foot traffic cones as megaphones] and kitschy reminders of home-or-somewhere [e.g., watching <i>Kill Bill 2</i> projected on the wall of a cafe while scarfing after dinner waffles and getting chewed on by a beagle puppy], culminating in a last night on the beach playing ukelele, spinning poi [and taking obligatory long-exposure photos] and speaking in broken-English-turned-broken-Thai-turned-animal-noisemaking-contests with a couple enthusiastic and snarky Thais.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--Bdap7v66Y4/Uzbc3WdmEdI/AAAAAAAAANw/qOEdQbmR3A8/s1600/IMG_0865.CR2" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--Bdap7v66Y4/Uzbc3WdmEdI/AAAAAAAAANw/qOEdQbmR3A8/s1600/IMG_0865.CR2" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">One of about twelve squillion identical-ish photos gleefully before a crowd of ethnically-heterogeneous drunkenly-enthralled spectators</td></tr></tbody></table>Koh Tao, Thailand &gt;--boat--bus--train--taxi--plane--[an irresistible aside: found begbugs in the waiting lounge seats of Kuala Lumpur's airport, in broad daylight no less, scout's fucking honor]--plane--&gt; <b>Melbourne, Victoria&nbsp;</b><br /><br />Will go into more detail later, but for now: modelling, enjoying very serendipitous airplane seating arrangements, holding koalas, feeding kangaroos, opining and feeling alternately awed and indignant at free art galleries squashed into loudly modern buildings from here to Adelaide, South Australia, and back.<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/10006596_2496980377294_1564096760_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-a-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/t1.0-9/10006596_2496980377294_1564096760_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tourist Photo #1</td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-b-hkg.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/1977008_2496982497347_908249971_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://scontent-b-hkg.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/t1.0-9/1977008_2496982497347_908249971_n.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tourist Photo #2 [also showcasing ten pounds of post-shoot make-up]</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b>Biblio-poop</b><br /><br />Additionally, I've been reading quite a bit more lately [thanks to lots of time spent on beaches and on three-day-long commutes]. Unqualified-letter-grade-reviews-with-no-profferred-reasoning:<br /><br /><i>-Brave New World</i>&nbsp;by Aldous Huxley: A<br /><i>-Oblivion</i>&nbsp;stories by David Foster Wallace: A or F [depending on my mood]<br /><i>-Outliers</i>&nbsp;by Malcolm Gladwell: C<br /><i>-Down Under </i>by Bill Bryson: A and C, alternately<br /><i>-Vagabonding</i>&nbsp;by Rolf Potts: B<br /><br />Next up:<br /><i><br /></i><i>-The Untold History of the United States</i>&nbsp;by Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick<br /><i>-At Home: A Short History of Private Life</i>&nbsp;by Bill Bryson<br /><i>-Even Cowgirls Get the Blues</i>&nbsp;by Tim Robbins<br />-Whatever's next given to me--or at least recommended vehemently to me, especially by some compelling and devilishly good-looking man encountered in passing, and then serendipitously on prominent display in the next bookstore I visit.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-69145802636872587342014-02-21T02:44:00.003-08:002014-02-21T02:56:54.028-08:00Post-Euphoria Uncomfortable Truths<b>Vang Vieng, Lao PDR</b><br /><br />It's now been a month since Alex and I first set off from San Francisco for Bangkok though, predictably enough, it feels like it's been ages. This morning I woke up from a vivid dream of being back in my hometown, driving my own <i>tuk-tuk </i>through a blizzard [though in reality my hometown rarely gets colder than 70° F] to enroll in an intensive curriculum at a Hogwarts-esque school with the most incredible bookstore I'd ever seen, where I met an awesome girl who was an equestrian stuntwoman, hitchhiker, and organic chemist and we quickly fell into an enthused conversation about traveling, self-sufficiency versus [or in conjunction with?] love...Life, the Universe, and Everything.<br /><br />I woke up, completely disoriented. <i>Why am I in a small, dark wooden box?</i><br /><br /><i>...Oh yeah. I'm in a </i>bungalow<i>. Somewhere in Asia...Lao. That's right. What the fuck.</i><br /><br /><i>&nbsp;</i>It's unsusprising that I'd be in such a funk. I've just gotten over about twenty-four hours of what I suppose must have been my first bout of really vicious food poisoning [though Alex and I have been sharing all our food, and he was unaffected, so who knows where I got it from]. For about eighteen hours Alex said I was barely human, just kind of a feverish, cramping zombie; in moments of coherence I suspected somewhat dramatically that I might be dying.<br /><br />Anyway, in all honesty, Vang Vieng sort of creeps me out, but over the last couple days being here has led us unexpectedly to our first major revelations on this trip. Of course, our brains have been working this whole time, trying to make sense of where we are and why, and what impacts we're contributing to by being here. Being in this city has crystalized a lot of those incubating thoughts and questions.<br /><br />In stark contrast with the shiny and etheral Utopia of Luang Prabang--full of happy, healthy, and educated locals, philanthropist-conservationist-entrepreneurial ex-pats, volunteer opportunities that required very little time or money from well-meaning passers-through, and so much natural and manmade beauty it almost hurt to look at [not to mention the fucking food, which I already gushed over in my last post]--Vang Vieng appears to have become a sort of wasteland since the time when most articles we've read about it were published.<br /><br />Coming here, it's easy to see that this place was once an innocuous little village, set right by the river against a beautiful backdrop of sheer green cliffs, huge natural caves, but otherwise not too different from any of the other small towns in this country.<br /><br />Then with the onset of tubing it sprung up a facade of debauchery and the sort of tourism that would appeal mainly to that particular class of sheltered, spoiled spring-break-gap-year kids who feel "invincible" and ever-deserving of whatever they want--a rather ugly facade considering how poor of a town it still obviously is.<br /><br />Then, when enough tourists started dying of drinking-drug-or-recreational-thrill-seeking-related mishaps, a whole shitton of the bars and rides were shut down by the powers that be, leaving a sparse sprinkling of bars that had us thinking, after a handful of crazy nights in Thailand and Luang Prabang, "So...where's the supposed nightlife in town?" Going tubing and seeing about five operating bars the whole way [and tens of shut-down establishments that obviously used to be bars, slides, and rides that were shut down for being unsafe] was similarly disillusioning. And now the locals who made their living off tourism are now still having to deal with its ill effects [arguably even more ill effects than other, similar places, considering the crowd Vang Vieng seems to attract] but are hard-pressed to find nearly as much business. While a few ex-pat bars thrive each night, the adjacent locally-staffed bars are pathetically vacant, even the ones offering free drinks for ladies before 10pm and other such no-strings specials.<br /><br />It feels like a dwindling amusement park I visited as a kid, with floundering business due to a few freak accidents [and the resulting bad press, shut-downs, and lawsuits], now devoid of families or young things and primarily full of sheisty thirty-year-old trashbags who'd wander aimlessly and hit on eleven year old girls [such as myself, at the time]. Or, as Alex put it, "it feels like Burning Man on Monday, after the temple's burned down...all the theme camps are still up, or partially up, but almost everyone's left."<br /><br />Before I pontificate any more, I might as well back-track to the route we took to our present dis-ease.<br /><br /><b>Disneyworld Veneer</b><br /><br />The bus ride into town was a charming but strange look at the countryside which brought back the feelings I had on our last, much longer, much more uncomfortable ride into Luang Prabang. Natural beauty, lots of domesticated animals and savagely happy kids running around and waving, but weird icons of darkness: on a food stand at one of our stops was a water jug full of clear liquid and several dismembered bear paws, with a tap at the bottom [what could that possibly be for?], and every so often we'd see older people broken to the point of deformation or paralysis due to working every day of their lives, walking around on their arms, their atrophied legs shriveled up into their bodies, or hunchbacked to the point of being folded entirely over, looking jaded [possibly doped up on opium, which <i>is</i> legal for older citizens, broken by a lifetime of work, to smoke in order to ease their pain]. Even the knowledge that the gorgeous, perfectly-preserved mountainous countryside all around us was probably in such pristine condition largely due to the fact that the undeveloped parts of the country are literal minefields made its beauty feel a bit sinister.<br /><br />Upon arriving, our first few couple days consisted mainly of vignettes of "paradise" that effectively distracted us from our deep-down feelings that there was something wrong with this place [and made us reluctant to admit these feelings to ourselves and one another].<br /><br />We arrived, and almost instantly found a lovely bungalow, much nicer and more accommodating than any room we'd stayed in so far, for half the price we'd been paying anywhere else.<br /><br />On our first night, we ran into about eight different people we'd seen before previously on our travels, and an unintelligibly drunk Londoner insisted upon buying us tequila shots before we slithered on our way. Several bars hand out free drink vouchers and have free Ladies Night specials every night where I can just walk in, order a mixer, and walk back out, and several bars will proffer free shots of <i>lao lao</i> if you ask. However, what little nightlife there was along the main drag seemed pretty fucking trashy and sad and full of overdrunk douchetools, so we'd mainly just go hang out back at our guest house, which was complete with a garden hammock hang-out spot where we had several nights of long conversations with other passers-through from New Zealand, Germany, England, and an unlikely eighteen-year-old Sacramento stoner who worked for two years in order to leave the country for the first time and travel solo around the world for a year and a half [or longer, depending on the work he could find abroad].<br /><br />The next day, we walked right through a massive herd of cows and a couple miles out of town into rice paddies and virtually empty countryside, scrambled up Pha Poak [small but rather steep, with no clear route except for some jenky-ass wooden ladders--we only saw one other tourist headed up on our way down, and he looked like he was halfway dead from exhaustion] for an incredible view of the town, the fields, small villages on the other side, and the towering cliffs nearby.<br /><br />A mile or so more of walking through lush jungley forest past water buffalo took us to Lusi Cave, the largest and prettiest natural cave I've been in so far, which has a lagoon you can swim in in the pitch-dark about an hour's walk in from the entrance [though it's currently dried up, so we didn't wander in that far].<br /><br />Several dogs roam about freely [as they seem to all around Thailand and Lao], but here they seem especially friendly despite having no obvious owners. A group of four puppies followed a few Germans back to our guesthouse and wound up frolicking around the garden all night. On one evening we encountered a random, unsupervised cage with two monkeys on the street; the smaller of the two made grabs at my fingers and skirt [eventually he nabbed a bit of my hair, examined it, and put it in his mouth before getting bored of it and tossing it aside] and we couldn't quite figure out why they were in there, nor how we felt about it--amused but sympathetic and a bit disgusted.<br /><br />Of all days to bring our camera with us, our first couple here easily would've yielded better photos than any we've taken so far...but we decided not to bother, and figured we'd rather just remain present, as we've done throughout most of our stay in Lao. Something about lugging around and pulling out a camera here feels kind of cheap.<br /><br />Then we decided to go tubing, since that's sort of the obligatory "thing to do in Vang Vieng", which is where we really started noticing how much of a wasteland this place seems to have become. We made a point to head out early enough so that it wouldn't be too crowded...on the contrary, almost no one else was around. About five bars were in operation [with fit Lao boys throwing ropes out to fish for tubers, which we'd then grab in order to be pulled into shore--a procedure I found hilarious], several abandoned buildings nearby indicated where other bars once were, and several ladders and ropes indicated rides or jumps that had been shut down as safety hazards. The river was so slow that we spent most of the time paddling ourselves in order to move at all, and despite getting started before noon, we struggled to make it back by the 6p.m. deadline in order to avoid a fee from the tube rental shop. Additionally, it suddenly became freezing fucking cold [granted, the river being cold, slow, and deserted may have had more to do with the time of year--despite this being high season].<br /><br />The one more-than-redeeming highlight of the day [the highlight of being in Vang Vieng, in general] was when we stopped over at one deserted bar and wandered further back when we saw a steep set of stairs and ladders leading up a cliff to a platform about a hundred or so feet up. We walked past a see-saw [which we were terrible at, since I'm half Alex's size], a bunch of tame baby bunnies that didn't seem to mind being pet, and several domesticated birds [geese, ducks, turkeys, chickens, huge tanks of hatchlings...and one of the weirdest, ugliest birds I've ever seen in my life, which I could only describe as a Durkey], clambered up the ladders and stairs to the platform, which yielded an incredible view, and then noticed a small cave entrance that would've been all too easy to miss. We clambered in and it was gorgeous, with natural bridges we could clamber across and a lower pit we could get to down a ladder, sunlight filtering through in such a way, illuminating shimmering mineral deposits and lush green mosses, that it looked like a fucking Dwarf Palace.<br /><br /><b>Looking Backstage</b><br /><br />After a few hours of paddling our arms frantically through frigid stillwater and increasing winds so as to make it back by 6 p.m. we realized aloud: there's nothing to <i>do</i> here except the standard "adventure tour" drag [mainly treks, or trips up to caves, most of which charge an entrance fee and some of which, that we'd previously read could be explored alone, require going with a guide--probably after enough tourists fucked up and died, as the trend here seems to be] or get wasted, and neither of those things aren't all that worth the trip compared to other places where they're better. The town at least isn't so much a real place where one can just <i>be</i>, relax, learn about, and appreciate; it's a broken-down Adventuretime facade. The natural geography here is really magnificent [which is probably how all the tourism cropped up here in the first place] but it's being exploited for cheap thrills.<br /><br />We walked back home where we were intending to just get changed out of our wet clothes before heading out into the night, but both inadvertently passed out, exhausted. A few hours later I woke up at the onset of a fever, severe cramps, and delirium. Yay, food poisoning [or whatever].<br /><br />A little over twenty-four hours later, as I was lying still and becoming a human again, Alex began a monologue that I've transcribed below. A bit later, when I felt well enough to speak fluently, turned into an extended conversation we've been ironing out ever since.<br /><br /><i>You know, when we first got here I just thought, 'Wow, this place is so much more wild and 'authentic' and rugged, I'm really enjoying this, blah, blah, blah.' But after a while, after the egocentric thoughts kind of dwindled, I'm realizing what I really think of this place.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>We got here, hating on Thailand's full moon parties and easy access and shit, but now I feel like...that's kind of where we </i>belong.<i> On some developed island, drinking cocktails rather than trying to fool ourselves into thinking we're doing something more "dignified" and "earnest".</i><br /><br /><i>At least in Vang Vieng, the locals look at us with this ugly mixture of hope, bitterness. Especially some of the older ladies here who've obviously worked hard their entire lives, too old now to figure out a way to adapt to our presence here. We walk by, I'll smile and offer a '</i>sa-bai-dee<i>,' and they'll just stare with this...indifference. But not just a fly-by not-noticing, but more a profound, conscious dismissal.</i><br /><br /><i>Even those who benefit, the tuk-tuk drivers and the vendors who smile and call out next to all the competing stands next to them that look exactly the same, beseeching us, "Please give us your money, you have so much of it and we need it," are basically bottom-feeders--here they're too desperate to brush off the tourists who decide to be assholes, or who insist on haggling harder than is fair, when it's inappropriate. They're not prospering off tourism. Here they still kiss all our asses no matter what bullshit we put them through or how dehumanizing we are...they may be benefiting more, but they still seem like slaves, just 'house niggas'.</i><br /><br /><i>Other tourists have been making me mad, and embarrassed, even for small transgressions. Ignorant jokes. Making cracks about hooking up with the prettier local women, like that's all they exist for. Getting angry when an impoverished Laotian--who might be illiterate in their native language--doesn't speak English, French, or whatever. Cultural insensitivity--even with signs in English asking them politely to wear shirts while they're in town. Throwing their cigarette butts and trash in beautiful places just because they're above keeping the place nice. Getting indignant when the cheap-ass comercial tour they paid for--that might cost the equivalent of a Lao person's wages in two months of working seven-day weeks--isn't "authentic" enough, or when everyone seems to be "trying to sell them things". Feeling entitled to 'local prices' and then not even realizing when they're already being </i>offered<i> those 'local prices'.</i><br /><br /><i>It's all pandered to them, too. Like the narco-tourism. It wasn't shut down because it was harming the locals...it was shut down when enough tourists died that it was making people hesitant to visit.</i><br /><br /><i>This facade's been created. Other tourists here are so detached. We were detached, too, when we first got here. No one comes to Vang Vieng to learn about the history or culture of this place. What history or culture? All you can see here are the detrimental effects of a failing tourist industry on a small third-world town that had the misfortune of being located in a beautiful place. And we were originally going to look into volunteering here...but volunteering around this town is SO much more expensive than being a tourist, even a somewhat extravagant one. </i><br /><i><br /></i><i>And here we are, falling asleep in this cozy tourist bungalow designed to look like the real thing while actually being much more comfortable, in a country built on fields of opium poppies, land mines, skeletons of war, and a nebulous government that everyone's too scared to even talk about.</i><br /><br /><i>We're invincible, coming here with our money, even if we're middle-class back home. Even across the world, if we get sick or get hurt, we'll be taken care of. For a pittance we can get private rooms, clean water, showers, and stuff ourselves with food.&nbsp;</i><br /><br /><i>People come here and pay to ride abused elephants or dehumanize and gawk at the hilltribes, who are some of the last strongholds of cultural isolation in a globalizing world. Then they complain that it's not "authentic". You don't need to hire a guide and go take photos of them to realize what's happening or to sympathize with them for being exploited and rendered as impoverished by outside forces. Even though we're not participating in those things, to a lesser degree, we're not exempt from that either. Even with less money than most people bring here, even by making an effort to learn and do no harm, we're still living it up, we've still got nice backpacks, and are still monetary miles above the standard here. I think it's important to understand this.</i><br /><br /><i>If you want an "authentic" experience, fucking go home and buy a sandwich at Subway.&nbsp;For the people here, it's just </i>life<i>, and it's harder than just about anyone comes with would ever want to subject themselves to--or would know how to handle. Some of the volunteering costs so much money because even the well-intentioned people who come to volunteer don't have the grit to do it without some of their first-world creature comforts, and don't have the skills to actually be all that useful. They come with philanthropic ideals molded more around their egos than around a true ability or willingness to be helpful. </i><br /><i><br /></i><i>Now I remember why I do this: to try and make a bit more sense of what's happening in the world. It'd be delusional to think I could get some simple, clean, final answer--that'd be impossible without knowing the history, goings-on, secrets, and interactions within and between everywhere in the world, which in itself is impossible knowledge.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>But we just come into the world--poof!--as another consciousness. Here we are. Why? Why do I have what I have? What does someone over there have? What's going on? Over here, over there? Are we all puppets, is there Free Will, is it beneficial to think there is even if there isn't, blah, blah, blah...?</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>And I don't know what to do, what I can or should do--if I should do anything. But I can travel, and learn. I don't know what else to spend a lifetime doing. Or at least this part of my lifetime, while I might have so much time and still know so damn little. </i><br /><br />He voiced my own solidifying thoughts and feelings at least as well as I could have, so there they are.<br /><br />And, duh. Luang Prabang and the major hubs of Thailand we've visited so far are, of course, also touristy as fuck--but there seems to be more of a symbiosis there between the locals and tourists. It doesn't seem so toxic.<br /><br />In most places we've been there's some semblance of mutual respect and appreciation, and even a lot of social crossover--we spent a good portion of a night in Luang Prabang playing music on the street with some Laotians, one of whom unwittingly led me to my gnarliest hangover ever when he kept offering me shots of <i>lao lao</i> and ignoring my laughing pleas of, "No more!" Similarly, the nightlife and partying and narco-tourism is rampant there, but it doesn't feel dark or thoughtless, rife with stories of overdose or exploitation--it feels more like what partying should be.<br /><br />And Thailand, while overrun with a different sort of ex-pat [i.e., perverted old men with young Thai girls, or people who just wanted to retire somewhere cheap, irrespective of where it was] and some other unpleasant variables, seems less tainted in that it decidedly <i>isn't</i> a third-world country the way Lao is, the people there aren't so desperate and taken for granted by entitled tourists flaunting their wealth here in a third-world country by wearing impractically decadent designer clothes, trying to haggle for set-price wet market items for the sake of saving an extra twenty-five cents because they're fucking idiots and don't know better and mistakenly think that no items are above haggling or that everything is dishonestly priced, knowing that sooner or later one of the reluctant food merchants will relent because, after all, beggars can't be choosers. In Thailand, when someone tries to do that, the vendors just laugh them off, and rightly so.<br /><br />I didn't feel dirty for being in most of the places we've been so far [though coming to terms with "being a tourist", not deluding myself into thinking I could be something more dignified by trying to "avoid the tourist stuff" or "rough it" more, and embracing my role as an inescapable fact took me a second], whereas coming here has wrought us with an uncomfortable sort of guilt...a feeling that we really don't <i>belong</i> here, that our presence is doing a lot more harm than good.<br /><br />Anyway. Time will tell what we might actually <i>do</i> with our evolving thoughts and attitudes, but for now we're still learning, trying to stay humble, to "see with eyes unclouded" and not delude ourselves into thinking we're "above" all the bullshit...while also not being too hard on ourselves.<br /><br />For now, I'm excited to get the fuck out of here tomorrow: the general plan is Vientiene, hop over the border to Nong Khai, then on to Southern Thailand via Bangkok in order to visit a few people and get scuba certs.<br /><br />Of course, as usual we've been playing by ear a lot and our "plans" have been changing every two days or so, so fuck if I know whether that's actually what we'll end up doing [or, if so, how long it'll end up taking us--two weeks or six].<br /><br />One side effect of all the Bangkok protests we've just found out about that's proved very serendipitous for us is that Americans entering Thailand by land can now stay visa-free for thirty days. A week or two ago, it was fourteen days--we would've had to fly in in order to stay the full thirty for free, so we'd resigned ourselves to hunting for as cheap a flight as possible from Vientiene into Bangkok and skipping Nong Khai, which would've been a shame since it's <i>right there</i> from Vientiene and was recommended by a "credible stranger" who didn't really tell us anything about it except that we should go there. I tend to prefer following random and vague suggestions than well-defended ones, which is probably why we didn't bother going to Pai when we were in the neighborhood-ish--too much hype from too many backpackers either yammering about how amazing it was, or about how overrated and overrun it was.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-55258590380431598582014-02-16T07:22:00.003-08:002014-02-20T23:09:34.758-08:00More Schoolgirl Rambling<b>Luang Prabang, Lao PDR</b><br /><br />Baby chicks and goats. Bamboo scaffolding. Happy kids eating shit on bikes. Women gathering river weed from the Khan and Mekong to sell at the market. Leaves bigger than I am. Families cooking their dinner in quiet back alleys. A dissolving of status and borders impossible to find in Thailand.<br /><br />Leaving this place tomorrow morning. Our guts today said, "Move", and so we must obey.<br /><br />I'm sad to leave. This place is more magical than I could ever bother trying to convey in words or photographs. The best, most ridiculous, most enriching experiences are--as usual, when life's at its best--the ones I can't even begin to write about, that'll have to be on reserve only for my closest friends, and only in person in the right setting: over a beer or a long drive or food on a subdued night in.<br /><br />However...there are two things I will allow myself to talk about.<br /><br /><b>Gastronomical Nirvana</b><br /><br />The food. Holy shit. Here, you can experience some of the best and most interesting fine dining for the same price you'd spend on a meal at In'N'Out at home.<br /><br />For instance, Tamarind, our favorite restaurant [definitely here, and possibly everywhere].<br /><br />We got dinner there, seated outside, right over the Khan River. Friendly waitstaff excitedly explained all the food to us. Water was served in glass bottles to reduce waste [there is a <i>lot</i> of plastic waste from packaging all over the place here--especially since everyone buys bottled water] and drinks came with bamboo straws that could be washed and reused.<br /><br />Anyway, we'd gotten a fixed-price meal, which had included:<br />-Chilean wine and a ginger/lemongrass drink<br />-A soup with bamboo shoots, pumpkin, mushroom, basil, green onion, aubergines...<br />-A platter of dishes including local river weed [my new favorite thing], tomato dip, eggplant dip, chili and buffalo skin dip, the best pork sausage I've ever had, buffalo jerky and, of course, a thing of <i>khao niaw </i>[sticky rice]<br />-Chicken wrapped in lemongrass, local Mekong fish grilled in a banana leaf, served with a tart/herby peanut sauce<br />-Stir-fried pumpkin with onions, spices, and mint<br />-Purple sticky rice with coconut meat, amazing Lao cookies that sort of taste like a cross between rice crackers and french toast [colloquially known by Laotians as "cat poo" because that's what they look like], and sweet/sour tamarind sauce<br />-local coffee with condensed milk and ground tamarind seed, and smoked green tea<br /><br />ALL of that...for two people...for a TOTAL of about $30. [Also, it was some of the best food we've had, ever--we tried a couple of other fancy restaurants in the area and they didn't even come close.]<br /><br />We went back for the "Adventurous Lao" set menu, which you have to book a day in advance and put down a deposit for [because they shop for ingredients at the local market, <i>just</i> for you, that same morning, based on your preferences, allergies, and "how adventurous" you are, and then create a custom menu for your dinner]. They warned us that sometimes the menu might contain bat, or pig blood, or whatever--it all depended on the morning markets. We told them to go nuts.<br /><br />This was our dinner:<br />-Bael fruit cinnamon drink and tamarind cooler<br />-Platter of eleven dishes: sour unripened red plum mash, barbequed plum with chili, rice powder with ginger and sugar, pig skin pork crackers, steamed local bitter greens and mushrooms in herbs and fermented fish sauce, oyster mushrooms in coconut milk, barbecued water bugs with chile [the bug dishes actually wound up being among my favorites, and this one was <i>really</i> fucking spicy], pumpkin leaves, baby jackfruit with long beans, grilled and seasoned river leaves at the banks [this was one of the only things I had trouble with--it tasted more like mud than food], river weed paste with chilis [one of the strangest textures of any food I've had--almost like pudding, but a lot slimier...basically, it's fresh green sludge from the bottom of the river].<br />-Platter of ten more dishes: fermented fish sauce with chili/lemongrass/eggplant/bamboo [this was the only thing we couldn't stomach], fresh river weed powder with garlic, raw baby ant eggs with herbs [sort of like spicy ceviche?], bamboo worms fried in garlic and kaffir lime, snails with oyster sauce, buffalo and pork meatball, pickled raw fish, a sweet dried pork thing I recognized as one of my favorite Chinese foods when I was a kid [called <i>ro sung</i> in Chinese], barbecued pig brains, pickled raw pork in a banana leaf.<br />-Grilled pork stuffed in zucchini flowers, and two soups: sour local fish tomato soup [where you ate the whole fish--bones, head, and all], spicy frog soup with chunks of pepper wood [you'd chew the wood without eating it to get the pepper flavor, and the thing basically contained a whole frog, skin and all, in frog broth].<br />-Six desserts: more purple sticky rice with coconut, more cat poo cookies, these incredible sesame/palm sugar/peanut wedges, pumpkin custard, grilled rice powder and coconut sugar things, and sticky rice banana balls.<br />-Also, they gave us shots of their own honey lime <i>lao lao</i>, on the house.<br /><br />We couldn't even come close to finishing, though we tried [minus the fermented fish sauce, everything was actually good as well as interesting]. For BOTH of us, the meal ran $32 total. A custom fucking meal.<br /><br />Anyway. We'd be there tonight, but they're closed on Sundays.<br /><br />As is Saffron Cafe on the Mekong side of town, also worth a mention, and also a place we'd be today if it were open: easily some of the best coffee I've ever had. I'm not really into mochas but their Luang Prabang Malt Mocha <br /><br />The founder, David, an American ex-pat, worked out a deal with some of the local hilltribes who'd been reduced to slash-and-burn agriculture [which is both highly inefficient for those practicing it, and detrimental and unsustainable for the land upon which it's practiced] after their former livelihoods of opium production became outlawed. Since then, the hilltribes have become extremely impoverished [not to mention that they're made a spectacle of by "treks" to their villages so that tourists can photograph them and basically act like they're at a human zoo]. These hilltribes live in areas ideal for coffee production, so basically, David gives them coffee trees, which they cultivate and hand-harvest, and then he buys the beans back from them. The resulting coffee is fantastic. <br /><br />The street food here is noteworthy, too. Surprising, delicious...and <i>healthy </i>[the only possible criticism I could make against Thai street food is that it left me feeling sick after chronic indulgence].<i> </i>For instance, today I got a tomato and lemon shake. Gross as it sounds, it was fucking incredible. Lao style sandwiches on baguettes have also become a favorite thing--they're big enough to split between two people, fucking delicious, healthy, and round out at about 10,000 <i>kip </i>[$1.25].<br /><br />Some of the street vendors are hilarious. The other night, a lady who sold us some noodles kept offering us sips of Beerlao [even before we'd agreed to buy anything] then cleared a space for us to sit down on a foam mat behind her booth. A lot of others make sassy jokes at our expense rather than brownnosing. It feels much less classist here, much more laid back.<br /><br />Also, the best donuts we've ever had. And they're not at the famous French bakeries in town [we've tried them there, too]--they're on the street, for a fraction of the price. <br /><br /><b>Versus Larger Cities in Thailand</b><br /><br />I loved Thailand...but there's little comparison. This place is cleaner and prettier. Despite being a <i>much</i> poorer country, on average the locals seem to enjoy a much better standard of living, both in town and in the countryside, whereas we saw much more of a wage gap between the rich and poor Thais. <br /><br />Yammering on...<br /><br />There, the ex-pats are largely fat old white men in Hawaiian-print shirts with teenage-looking Thai wives; many of them show up to live like kings on their pensions with the locals in segregated servitude, never bothering to learn the language or customs. We'd come across people who lived in Thailand for decades and were married to Thai wives...and they'd know less of the language than we did after a <i>week</i> of casual studying.<br /><br />Here, the ex-pats tend to be philanthropists, conservationists, or entrepreneurs of businesses that mostly employ Laotians [thanks to a law that for every foreign employee at a business there must be ten employees from Lao--a law I think makes a hell of a lot of sense for this country]. [Plus, there's a law against foreigners hooking up with Laotians unless they're married...which is actually rather refreshing, as it keeps out the pervy old men out to score a really young Asian wife].<br /><br />There, the tourists often seemed grumpy and detached, as if they were at a theme park and were owed good service, getting indignant at really pathetically stupid things [like portion sizes at street vendor carts, or at the fact that not everyone spoke English].<br /><br />Here, the tourists seem more adventurous, appreciative, respectful, and present, aware that they're in a developing and wild country.<br /><br />There, the <i>tuk-tuk</i> drivers seem desperate to pull you in for a rip-off ride to a gift shop that pays them a commission, or to a happy massage. They're often aggressive, invasive, and indignant, simultaneously seeming to resent the presence of tourists and to depend on it.<br /><br />Here, the <i>tuk-tuk</i> drivers good-naturedly joke and cat-call, they seem to enjoy their jobs and don't appear desperate for your cash...possibly because the vast majority of them moonlight as dealers of all manner of illicit substances.<br /><br />There, the street food was plentiful and good. I never ran out of interesting things to try, and it was damn cheap. So what if it was mostly sugary and fried and made my stomach complain? The restaurants were either all the same, or expensive.<br /><br />Here, the street food is just as good, nearly as varied [and the restaurant food definitely makes up for it--fine dining at dirtbaggy prices], is even cheaper, and feels <i>healthy. </i>For the first time since coming to Asia, I don't feel slogged down in fry grease. And, all the fancy French bakeries in town notwithstanding, the <i>best</i> donuts I've had [ever, in my life] are available for 2000 <i>kip</i> in the street [about twenty-five cents].<br /><br />There, the locals were polite and helpful for the most part. Friendly, but somewhat reserved. Most of them had reasonably good English [or refused adamantly to speak English, which I think is understandable]. Main pastimes seemed to include shopping and eating. There was a segregation perpetuated both by locals and visitors that made it hard to break into local culture in any sincere way--it was impossible to feel like anything but a <i>customer</i>.<br /><br />Here, the locals are rambunctious, childlike, excitable, self-sufficient, and eager to make jokes whether at their own expense or yours. Most of them speak three or four languages [Thai, French, and English--better English than all the upper-class Thais we met]. Main pastimes seem to include drinking, playing music, and getting up to weird games and shenanigans.<br /><br />There, there were thousands of mangy stray dogs, cats, and a lot of beggars [many of whom were blind or amputees and several of whom appeared to be affected by different diseases].<br /><br />Here, there are thousands of domestic [or at least clean and tame] dogs and cats [as well as goats, chickens, and so on], and I haven't seen a single beggar in Luang Prabang, and the poorer villages seem to thrive on self-empowered participation so everyone can fend for themselves effectively.<br /><br />There, temples often looked more like kitschy tourist attractions than places of worship. Full of plaster restorations, garbage, concrete, plaques, and souvenir booths. <br /><br />Here, the temples are breathtaking and force you to stop and look--they're works of art, with intricate mosaics or other minute details, and give you a real sense of their history. Many of the monks are young boys who came from rural areas and joined monkshood in order to receive a good education.<br /><br />OH. And in Thai cities, restaurants can be stingy as <i>fuck</i> with water. Even if you go to a nice place and buy a meal, they usually won't provide water unless you're willing to buy it [and will mark up the prices accordingly]. Here, you're given water with any sit-down snack or meal, or even with coffee if you stop by a cafe.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-67163622496579161412014-02-11T03:12:00.000-08:002014-02-11T03:18:17.237-08:00Someone Else's Dream<b>Luang Prabang, Lao PDR</b><br /><br />Finally, I've found a bit of what I didn't realize I was looking for.<br /><br />The last few days have been slow-motion mayhem, like a bunch of inept drivers steering their cars through snow for the first time--chaotic and uncontrolled, but slow enough to buffer any true danger. A stew of misadventure and serendipity.<br /><br />I didn't see it while in Thailand, but with this new contrast I understand what I've been missing:<br /><br />Thailand felt like a&nbsp;<i>vacation</i>. Everything was shaped around tourism. It was all easy, required little imagination, and something about it felt very false and Disneyland-esque. The main pastimes for locals and tourists alike seemed to be eating and shopping [with the secondary options of getting massages, partying, and sightseeing]. It's a place where I felt I either had to make an "itinerary" or else ambled around placidly, wondering what I was doing there, trying to figure out my "role" as a "tourist", feeling vaguely uncomfortable and embarrassed to be affiliated with some of the other tourists there, many of whom were behaving rather disgustingly: stomping around with a sense of entitlement, dehumanizing the natives, being indignant just for the sake of being indignant. Several ex-pats there, with pasty bellies covered with Hawaiian shirts and little Thai wives in tow, spoke less Thai than I did after being there for only two weeks, let alone read any.<br /><br />In contrast, in Laos I feel like I'm actually&nbsp;<i>living.&nbsp;</i>I haven't been uneasy about being a visitor here. The tourists I've encountered seem more childlike, adventurous, flexible. Even the rich kid spring breakers who are just here to get wasted on lao lao whisky basically seem happy and playful and basically like real human beings.<br /><br />The Laotians themselves are a sharp contrast to Thais [who comprise many of the tourists here, as well]. They seem a lot more rambunctious and easygoing--<i>whoop-whoop</i>ing loudly when a power outage strikes at night, playing weird little hop-scotch games and acting like kids, singing or laughing raucously and at random, giving less of a shit and just having a good time. They're easygoing and friendly, but don't kiss our asses or seem to care much that we're here [unless they're trying to make money from us, understandably]. And not only do they have&nbsp;<i>really</i>&nbsp;good English [much better than virtually all the Thais we met], but many of them speak Thai and French as well [I've spoken more Thai here than in Thailand].<br /><br />In contrast, most Thais we met, while very likeable, seem more like your average first-worlders: more polite and "civil" [at the expense of being a bit stuffy or insincere at times], and certainly more materialistic.<br /><br />The hundreds of small children we've seen have all been really self-sufficient and healthy: kids as young as six pushing their bikes up a steep hill a couple miles out of town, waving to us as we pass by, wandering through the mountains on their own, helping the adults with manual labor, playing with bugs.<br /><br />Everything's gone "wrong" or has otherwise been "unexpected", but it's all worked out perfectly. In Thailand I felt like a grown-up on holiday--here I feel like a Lost Boy in Neverland, laughing deliriously at how absurd life is, much more present in the moment, disinterested in checking my email or researching "things to do" or "things to know" online.<br /><br />While I really enjoyed Thailand...Laos is way, way more my bag. I haven't stopped giggling incredulously since I got here. If Alex and I were to pigeonhole our views on life, we'd probably both call ourselves absurdists...an outlook Laos seems to amplify.<br /><br />The countryside is breathtaking, and Luang Prabang feels like being in someone else's dream. We want all the people we love to get their asses over here. If we had more money, we'd buy plane tickets for our closest friends and family in a heartbeat. Someday.<br /><br /><b>Chiang Rai</b><br /><b><br /></b>We left Chiang Mai for Chiang Rai [after leaving the lady at our guest house a thank-you note in Thai that was more likely than not full of mistakes, though we figured she'd find them amusing], which we thought might be a bit of a smaller, more rural version.<br /><br />Not quite.<br /><br />Chiang Rai, while half the size of Chiang Mai, felt distinctly more "industrial urban" when we first rolled in. Our bus passed several car dealerships and wove through a lot of slummy looking shops an office buildings before arriving.<br /><br />When we got off our bus, we had our first unpleasant interactions with Thai natives.<br /><br />The&nbsp;<i>tuk-tuk</i>&nbsp;drivers were pushy as always, but with less good humor--several of them gestured as if to grab me and made animal noises at me, laughing and saying things like, "get in tuk-tuk or you don't know where you're going, backpack too heavy for&nbsp;<i>farang</i>&nbsp;girl."<br /><br />We kept walking and found an Internet cafe with the pushiest restaurant staff we've ever met. As a sharp contrast to the friendly and laid-back establishments in Chiang Mai, everything was very calculated: the moment we stepped up to the entrance, we were chivvied forcefully to a table [even though we said we just wanted to check out the prices outside], stood over and stared down by a notepad-equipped server before we even had a chance to peruse the menus, even when we asked to be given a few minutes; the bathrooms cost 20&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;for non-customers; the wi-fi was only available to those who made an order of at least 50&nbsp;<i>baht;</i>&nbsp;the food was all Western [pizzas, Caesar salads...] and extremely pricey [about four or five times what we've been paying for meals].<br /><br />We shrugged and ordered a small dish in order to get Internet access, and when Alex tried to plug in the tablet [which was dead], he was stopped abruptly by a staff member who said it would cost 20&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;to plug in his phone.<br /><br />"Well, we just made an order so we could use the Internet."<br /><br />"Yes, you can use Internet free with your order, but you have to pay to use the power."<br /><br />"But we&nbsp;<i>can't</i>&nbsp;use the Internet unless we plug in our tablet. It doesn't cost you anything to let us charge it, and no one else is using the outlets, so why do we need to pay to use one for ten minutes?"<br /><br />"It doesn't even matter why! It's only twenty<i>&nbsp;baht</i>! For you, twenty&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;is&nbsp;<i>so little</i>, it's practically&nbsp;<i>nothing.</i>"<br /><br />"Hey. Look. No one&nbsp;<i>owes</i>&nbsp;you money just because they have it, you still need to treat them fairly and give them a good reason to buy from you--good food, or at least friendliness. Your prices are already much more than a local would pay, but we were still going to eat here. I'd rather give two hundred&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;to someone else who was honest and respectful. Or at least good-natured." I gestured to Alex to leave.<br /><br />"Should I cancel your order?"<br /><br />"Probably. We won't be here to pay for it."<br /><br />Even the scammers and pushy vendors we've met have been fun to interact with, smiling and joking their way into our pockets.<br /><br />Look, I fucking get it--we're tourists, and the fact that we're even&nbsp;<i>in</i>&nbsp;Thailand means we're well-off by Thai standards, even if we'd be paupers in the States. We're coming here to visit your town, often quite disoriented at first, and you're being adaptable and resourceful by capitalizing on it.<br /><br />I don't even mind being ripped off [for instance, when it's obvious I have no other option but to hire the one&nbsp;<i>tuk-tuk</i>&nbsp;at a remote bus station, so he overcharges me]--I can understand it, and I've laughed it off when it's happened. It's fair--the ride is still worth paying for, and in his position, I'd do the same thing.&nbsp;But at the end of the day, it's still an interaction between two human beings.<br /><br />I try to be receptive...but I'm a bit proud. I'm not going to shell out to someone who treats me with scorn at my presence and entitlement to my money before I've even had a chance to cause offense, even if it means walking an extra few kilometers with a heavy pack, or settling for a lesser option.<br /><br />Soon we found a cheap enough guest house to settle for [Chook Dee, 250&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;for a private room]. The place was a bit alienating--super rasta-ed out, with black lights and Lisa-Frank-meets-stoner murals on the walls, the lower floor cafe full of Europeans with dreadlocks that looked like pythons [five feet long and as thick as my arm--I'm all for dreadlocks, but those were a bit much to see on skinny little French pretty boys in designer clothes], reggae music in the background. 420-everything. It was owned and run by a few Thais, most of whom seemed rather wary of their tenants.<br /><br />"Do you think the owner is genuinely into this scene, or is this his conception of what'll appeal to the tourists who come through here?"<br /><br />"Moreover, if this&nbsp;<i>is</i>&nbsp;his conception...is he right?"<br /><br />Our room itself had a weird under-the-floorboards-seedy-bordello feel to it. Dimly-lit, dark wood. A picture of Bob Marley hung on the wall [which made me laugh]. The one small window opened out to a tiny tucked-away balcony with a bamboo bench and table you had to clamber out through the window to get to and a low roof that made you feel like you were in a secret hiding place looking out onto the street below. I absolutely loved this feature; the balcony was completely littered with other people's beer bottles and cigarette butts, but if anything this almost added to the appeal. The whole place was a bit crusty; the comforter obviously hadn't been washed in a while [jizz stains, human hair, dirt...] and we wondered if there might be bed bugs, but we resolved to embrace the whole thing.<br /><br />"It's nasty. It makes me kind of uncomfortable. The other tourists staying here seem washed up and kind of creep me out. But I kind of like it...<i>because</i>&nbsp;I don't like it. Besides, every other vacant guest house is twice as expensive."<br /><br />One big difference in Chiang Rai was the blatant segregation between the Thais and the ex-pats/tourists. In Chiang Mai, there was a bit more intermingling--the town had embraced its status as a tourist destination, and there seemed to be a symbiotic relationship between Thais and foreigners, for the most part.<br /><br />Chiang Rai was a lot less touristy, but still full of tourists. The ex-pats seemed to be there simply because it was a cheap place to live, and not because they actually liked the place. There were markets specifically catered to tourists, and ones specifically catered to locals, with little mixing of demographics. The foreigners were cold, deadbeat. The locals were dismissive.<br /><br />We figured it'd be worth sticking around a couple days to see if our attitudes tot he place changed, and decided to look into things to do [because we'd run out of ideas after one night of exploring]. Online, the main attractions listed were the night bazaar [which we went to on our first night] and the clocktower [which was right next to our guest house]...other than that, there were temples to see, a couple uninteresting-sounding museums, and some natural sites to explore out-of-town [some of which were only really open to tour groups rather than self-guided adventures]...many of which were described as "once pristine, but a bit trashed now thanks to inconsiderate tourists."<br /><br />"...Well, you know, we could just spend a few days studying the hell out of Thai, and playing ukelele, spending next to nothing. If we were somewhere more interesting we'd be less motivated to study."<br /><br />We were a bit homesick for Chiang Mai, but were surprised at what things we missed. The two things we missed most:<br /><br /><ul><li>The 1&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;water filling stations, some of which were very hidden [at the ends of back alleys, obscured behind marketplaces, etc.] that made us feel like we'd stumbled across hidden treasure when we found them and, overtime, saved us several disposable plastic bottles and hundreds of&nbsp;<i>baht.</i></li><li>An adorable lady with a coffee truck that had a counter under the window just big enough for the two of us to sit, struggling to spell out titles on Thai-language magazines she provided, while she laughed at our broken Thai and made us the best iced coffee and tea drinks in town [for 25&nbsp;<i>baht</i>&nbsp;each]. Every time we went, she'd make us an extra free drink even better than whatever we'd ordered [a shot of special Thai coffee, or milky green tea with tapioca pearls]. We both regretted not saying goodbye to her before we left town, and she's the first person I'll look for if I go back.</li></ul><div>However, Chiang Rai had its good points:&nbsp;</div><div><ul><li>The disdainful attitude to tourists was kind of a blessing in disguise: it made our interactions with Thais more rewarding [since we had to prove ourselves a bit first before they'd pay us any mind] and gave us more opportunity to practice our Thai [since a lot of them didn't bother learning English or putting English names on their menus--and a lot of the ones who&nbsp;<i>did</i>&nbsp;know English would pretend not to when approached by foreigners].&nbsp;A lot of the natives would stare coldly and silently at me as if to say, "I don't sell hamburgers here.&nbsp;Are you lost, little girl?" Then I'd read something off the sign or eke out a few sentences, and they'd smirk, visibly surprised. I'd ask to get something extra spicy, and they'd laugh incredulously, clearly thinking I was ignorant, but would throw in an extra chili. Then, when we successfully ate the food without dying and thanked them for it, they'd warm up to us, and the next time around would have a completely different attitude: they'd help us read the menus, teach us new words, or correct our pronunciation, and encourage us when we made efforts. There was something kind of American-east-coast about it all that we kind of appreciated: our interactions felt a lot more genuine, a lot less "customer service"-y, and in that way actually made us feel a bit&nbsp;<i>more</i>&nbsp;a part of the community.</li><li>A lot more varied merchandise than in Chiang Mai [where you see the same few products in&nbsp;<i>every</i>&nbsp;booth, much of which is sweatshop-made]. Some higher quality goods.&nbsp;<i>Much</i>&nbsp;better prices on the cheaper/generic products.</li><li>Distinctly different food. Also cheaper. And the best&nbsp;<i>som tam</i>&nbsp;I've ever had, made by a brusque but awesome Thai woman on the street.</li></ul></div><div>Anyway, another blessing in disguise:</div><div><br /></div><div>A couple nights in, I woke up at about 4:30am to find Alex collecting bed bugs in a plastic cup, looking disgusted and amused.</div><div><br /></div><div>I blinked at him for a while. "...I told you so."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Meh. Ew. Shall we find another guest house tomorrow?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Actually, why don't we just get the hell out of here? It feels forced, like we're holding out to find reasons to be here. We both keep trying to convince each other that it's worth it, but neither of us really wants to."</div><div><br /></div><div>"...Yes. Where to?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"How about Laos?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Sure. What's in Laos?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Who knows? We're idiots, we don't know anything."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Laos sounds fantastic."</div><div><br /></div><div>The next day there was no one at the counter to inform about the bed bugs, so we just left the cup of bed bugs on top of our key and went on our way, following a route we'd found online that would get us to Luang Prabang by the following morning [...or so we thought].</div><div><b><br /></b></div><div><b>In Limbo</b></div><div><br /></div><div>From Chiang Rai, we took a bus for a couple hours to Chiang Khong, a&nbsp;<i>tuk-tuk&nbsp;</i>to Thai immigration, a shuttle to Laos immigration, which was a clusterfuck of paying fee after fee for who-the-hell-knows, and then were crammed into a&nbsp;<i>songthaew&nbsp;</i>with several other backpackers from different parts of Europe who--we were relieved to see--seemed just as confused as we were ["Okay, so we're not the only suckers here, that's nice"]<i>&nbsp;</i>at the fees, at being made fun of by the snarky bureaucrats, at the locals offering scalped tickets.</div><div><br /></div><div>By this point, Alex and I were so delirious that we were reduced to cackling at&nbsp;<i>everything</i>: the fees we kept having to pay in three different currencies without knowing why ["Forty&nbsp;<i>baht&nbsp;</i>because it's a Saturday! One dollar for smelling funny!"]&nbsp;going to the ATM for&nbsp;<i>kip&nbsp;</i>and&nbsp;entering a withdrawal amount of 1,000,000&nbsp;[we counted the zeroes several times to make sure we had it right since we couldn't stop giggling], the fact that we hadn't encountered food for several hours, the fact that the&nbsp;<i>songthaew</i>&nbsp;driver knew that none of us were really in a position to haggle with him [we were in the middle of nowhere, and no other drivers were around to compete with him], then the fact that we all got packed in with our backpacks like a bunch of sardines with no room to spare.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>Everything was hilarious. In a backwards way, we were having a fucking blast. The other backpackers seemed a bit less delirious [and a lot more grumpy with the situation].</div><div><br /></div><div>The two of us were dropped off at the bus station, which was also in the middle of nowhere. We went to go buy tickets for that night's sleeper bus...only to find they were sold out.</div><div><br /></div><div>This made us crack up more, which seems to have become our default reaction to everything ever since crossing the border. Everything is absurd; everything is funny. A lot of Laotians we've encountered seem to feel the same way, and laugh loudly at everything [and nothing]. Maybe there's nitrous oxide pumped into the air here. Seems like it would keep the peace...and eliminate the need for social programs. Hahaha.</div><div><br /></div><div>The sun was setting. We'd finally gotten some noodles in our system and could sort of think properly.</div><div><br /></div><div>"Well...we have a mosquito net. We could set up the hammock somewhere."</div><div><br /></div><div>"There are no trees. Or poles. We could sleep on a bench?"</div><div><br /></div><div>"Beer first. Decisions later."</div><div><br /></div><div>Facing off on either side of the bus station were two identical-looking narrow strip buildings. One contained a row of shops; the other turned out to contain a row of rooms [presumably for people like us who'd been stranded]. Instead of a lobby, we simply walked up to a window in the middle of the building.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>It's difficult to describe what that place felt like--but it reminded me of being on the outskirts of Joshua Tree. Sort of an eerie, haunted, portal-to-hell-at-the-edge-of-the-world feeling that I nonetheless really liked.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>The room seemed out of place--we walked in and instantly felt like we were inside of a motel in the states, rather than a guest house in Southeast Asia. On the far wall was a small Alice-and-Wonderland-esque door, which we opened, only to see find that it was actually a window that looked out onto nothing. ["Probably a portal to an alternate universe."] There was a TV in the room--it had been at least a week since I'd seen a TV--and we turned it on out of curiosity. A Thai-dubbed version of "A Walk to Remember" was on.</div><div><br /></div><div>We wandered out to explore. At this point, we appeared to be the only people there, and it had grown dark. Still, we heard some dancey music coming from nearby-ish. Past a thicket of trees, we could see the flickering of LEDs.</div><div><br /></div><div>"No fucking way. Is there a bar out&nbsp;<i>here? No one</i>&nbsp;is here."</div><div><br /></div><div>We followed the blinky lights and noise, which felt reminiscent of Burning Man, and discovered where the music was coming from: on one side of an empty, lonely road, flood lights lit up a&nbsp;<i>huge</i>&nbsp;inflatable Angry Birds bouncy slide, which a bunch of kids were climbing up and rolling down unsupervised. What sounded like Thai salsa music was blaring at them from speakers.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>We stood there for a long time, uncomprehending.</div><div><br /></div><div>The blinky lights, on the other hand, were coming from a small bar about a hundred feet away. It was half-hidden by the trees, completely dark and silent, and looked closed except for the ropes of neon lights all around it. We walked inside, and after a moment or two a woman rolled up on a motorbike, sold us a couple beers, and led us to the back patio. A few seconds later, music came on--an alternation between Thai pop, and Justin Bieber covers.</div><div><br /></div><div>Still giggling and delirious, we gave up on trying to make sense of anything. A small orange tomcat snuck up on us out of nowhere [I'd thought he was a huge rat at first] and stepped into my lap, meowing beseechingly at us every once in a while. He stayed there until we left, at which point I'd gotten rather attached.</div><div><br /></div><div>To further exacerbate the feelings of "this place is fucking eerie/haunted/otherworldly", that night was a bit odd, as well:</div><div><ul><li>We woke up in the room at the exact same moment, both completely alert and under the impression that it was morning. Alex glanced at the time and said it was 8:50 a.m. We started packing up, and then I opened the door--it was pitch black and deserted outside. We checked the time again, and it was about 2 a.m. Eventually we fell back asleep.</li><li>I realized during a dream that I was dreaming [having only had one lucid dream before]--but instead of being able to take control from there, the dream turned into a mind-fuck nightmare, hit me with a crazy intense body-high that lasted after I woke up, and left me in a weird in-between state where I was still stuck asleep but could see our room, hearing freaky dream-voices of people asking to be woken up. I still remember the whole thing as vividly as if it had actually happened, but won't bother going into further detail. Then I woke up, experienced sleep paralysis for the first time [which was fucking terrifying] and, after I could finally move, had a conversation with Alex--only to realize a few moments later that the conversation had only happened in my head, and that I'd dreamed/hallucinated it, as well.&nbsp;He woke up, and then we had the conversation--in reality--that we'd already had in my head a few moments prior [which I also told him].&nbsp;In the last year I've been experiencing some rather fucked up and terrifying dream-related phenomena for the first time ever [successions of false awakenings, for instance], but this was new.</li></ul></div><div><div>We stayed up for several more hours having decidedly morbid conversations about dreams and death and how much credence, as self-proclaimed skeptics, to give the metaphysical. And about Laos: how enclosing of a place it seemed to be. As the most-bombed country in history, it's still unsafe to go bushwhacking in remote parts of Laos due to unexploded bombs. Also, in addition to being an extremely poor country, it's illegal for Laotians to hook up with foreigners, and outside of Laos,&nbsp;<i>kip</i>&nbsp;[an unstable and inflationary currency] are completely worthless and can't be converted to foreign currencies. Many Laotians working full-time with families live on about $1-2 a day, and even college-degree-holding Laotians may make just over $100 in a month.</div><div><br /></div><div>"So...it seems like, if you were born in Laos, you're pretty much stuck here, whether you want to be or not. It'd be hard to get out--no way to save up enough money to leave, even if you get a degree, and not much chance of marrying a foreigner."</div><div><br /></div><div>"You know...I've met a lot of Americans whose families were from everywhere else in Southeast Asia, but I haven't really come across anyone from Laos. Well, or Myanmar. I don't think it's that common."</div><div><br /></div><div>"But the people we've met so far all seem so&nbsp;<i>happy</i>. Minus the border officials, but border officials never seem happy."</div><div><br /></div><div>"Maybe that's&nbsp;<i>why.</i>&nbsp;They don't have as many choices, so they figure out how to be happy with the choices they do have, and the decisions they make. We're lucky enough to have the paradox of choice, so no matter what we choose, it's hard not to wonder if we could've chosen something better."</div></div><div><br /></div><div>The bus ride the next day was hilarious and a bit terrifying. We were crammed into little upper-bunk capsule-recliners without enough room to sit up or straighten our legs.&nbsp;There were cheap little helmet-strap seat belts to keep us in place...but they were broken. So, we&nbsp;had to hold onto anything we could find in order to avoid rolling or bouncing out of our bunk. For fourteen hours, the bus wound around mountainous roads that were curvy, steep, sometimes unpaved. At points, it looked as if we were going to drop straight off sheer cliffs. We kept our shoes in plastic bags and had to enter the bus barefoot. Every once in a while, we'd stop, and everyone would stumble blearily out of the bus and go pop a squat at the edge of some magnificent canyon.&nbsp;We alternately slept [I'm amazed we&nbsp;<i>could</i>&nbsp;sleep], continued to laugh deliriously,&nbsp;and watched movies like&nbsp;<i>Mulholland Drive</i>&nbsp;[after our weird night at the bus station, we were in that sort of mood].</div><div><br /></div><div>The scenery was incredible. We passed small villages of stilted huts and busy people, many of whom waved and grinned as we passed by, wild and lushly overgrown mountains, huge green valleys--scenes that nothing we saw on the several buses we took in Thailand could hold a candle to that left us in disbelief ["Where the hell&nbsp;<i>are</i>&nbsp;we? Is this a real place?"]</div><div><br /></div><div>We arrived at the bus stop around midnight. A solitary&nbsp;<i>tuk-tuk</i>&nbsp;driver was there, and took us and two other backpackers into Luang Prabang.</div><div><br /></div><div>It was silent. For about an hour, the four of us wandered like lost children from guest house to guest house, waking up the proprietors only to be told there were no available rooms. We were exhausted, but couldn't stop grinning at how gorgeous the town was, even in the dead quiet dark. After checking at about thirty places, Alex and I settled for a room about twice what we were hoping to pay for, eager for a bed. The other two continued on, determined to find a cheaper place.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div><b>I'm Completely Fucking Infatuated</b></div><div><br /></div><div>If I ever find a place more beautiful than this one, I'm moving there, no question. I might move here, eventually, if it doesn't change for the worse.</div><div><br /></div><div>Luang Prabang is beautiful and strange and enchanting. Being here in and of itself feels like falling in love.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm at a loss. I haven't taken a single picture in town. We don't&nbsp;<i>want</i>&nbsp;to pull out the camera because we'd rather be fully present, immersed in this place, without the distraction of taking photos. Any pictures we took wouldn't do the place justice, anyhow.</div><div><br /></div><div>And there's too much.&nbsp;We could take photos of&nbsp;<i>everything.&nbsp;</i>The whole town almost feels like an interactive museum or art piece [but also feels like much more of an "actual place" than, say, the more touristy parts of Bangkok and Chiang Mai, even though Luang Prabang is also a heavily-traveled area].<i>&nbsp;</i>I guess that makes sense--the entire town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>There are the Mekong and Khan rivers, the gorgeous Secret-Garden-meandering-alleyways, colonial French architecture, stilted huts, the jenky-as-shit bamboo footbridge across the Khan that looks from town to be so much further below and so much longer than it actually is [since it's so thin]. Not a single part of this town isn't enchanting--even the poorer areas, the residences, the back alleys. And, whereas many of the temples in Thailand almost looked fake and Las-Vegas-y, with tacky restored facades, souvenir booths, and signs, the ones here have stopped us in our tracks and compelled us to stare, or to walk in [or up hundreds of stairs] to get a better look at. They feel like&nbsp;<i>real&nbsp;</i>places--the impeccably-maintained ones give you a sense of having traveled back in time, and the ruins gave you a sense of their history.&nbsp;</div><div><br /></div><div>I'm at a loss to go into further detail, though my mind's been reeling with taking it all in. Crossing the footbridge last night, after several hours of aimless wandering, Alex put it well, "It kind of feels like we're in someone else's dream."</div><div><br /></div><div>If I had more money, I'd buy plane tickets for everyone I love most to come here, right this second.</div><div><br /></div><div>We woke up in the morning and, before we'd even left our guest house, had been asked by a couple girls from the Netherlands to go with them to Kuangsi Waterfall, which we'd never heard of. We agreed, grabbed breakfast on the way, and spent the next half hour gathering a group of eight people and haggling with&nbsp;<i>songthaew</i>&nbsp;drivers until one would settle for our price. On the way we passed incredible terraced rice fields and so on and so forth, which made most other "countrysides" I'd seen look, in hindsight, like barren wastelands.</div><div><br /></div><div>Kuangsi was the only place in Laos we've bothered with picture-taking, so far. Once there, we passed a bear rescue center with several moon bears [which I'd never seen or heard of before--weirdest looking bears I've ever fucking seen], then jumped off trees and small waterfalls into into bright turquoise water that didn't look real. There were several tourists here, but of a different ilk--it was a lot of adults acting like kids, making friends with strangers despite language barriers [you don't need to speak the same language if you're just jumping off waterfalls together and laughing at one another's belly flops], excited to be there, and the site was clean despite the large number of visitors. After that, Alex and I climbed up to the top of the enormous falls further along--an uphill climb very few visitors seemed to want to bother doing.</div><div><br /></div><div>When we got back, we only had to walk for a few minutes before a Laotian guy on a scooter asked us if we needed a room and told us he ran a guesthouse, handing us business cards/maps and asking us to follow him. I recognized the name of the place as one of the guest houses we'd tried during our late-at-night-asking-around, so we followed him, and he showed us to a really nice room at the cheapest rate we'd found in town so far. I kept waiting for a catch, but there didn't seem to be one, and we're still staying there.</div><div><br /></div><div>I might as well stop here. It's really a place that defies description.</div><div><br /></div><div>Last things:<br /><br /><ul><li>Utopia Bar [which we stumbled across at the end of our adventures last night] is easily the most insane bar I've ever seen. "Bar" doesn't even seem like the right word for it. There's a volleyball court and a deck&nbsp;<i>right&nbsp;</i>over&nbsp;the Khan river. It's swanky, full of floor seating on Thai mats and tables tucked away behind a dense garden of trees. The drinks are strong, and while pricier than the cheapest drinks you can get in town, are still damn cheap [a few bucks for a bucket of booze, or a couple bucks for a strong cocktail]. Sort of feels like an obscenely ritzy, permanent theme camp. Anywhere else, and this place would have a steep cover charge, minimum drink quotas, and the cocktails would be about $30.</li><li>To demonstrate how cheap it is to get drunk here: in about an hour's span last night, when passing by the nightlife-y part of town, we saw maybe ten people in the act of throwing up in the gutters [not to mention several vacated puke piles].</li><li>I haven't seen a single beggar here, nor anyone who appears poor, or otherwise destitute or unhealthy. It's almost suspicious. It looks so clean here [front-of-bar puke piles notwithstanding].</li><li>Lao-style baguette sandwiches. Holy shit.</li><li>In addition to all the great street/cheap food, there's fine dining here [legitimately fancy], for the equivalent of a low-to-mid-range meal anywhere else.</li></ul></div><div>Not sure how long we'll be here...currently wishing we'd gotten longer visas [we've only got a month], but we're running out of money anyway.</div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-87515832775997831462014-02-05T00:18:00.001-08:002014-03-29T08:41:41.770-07:00Groundhog Day<b>Chiang Mai, Thailand</b><br /><br />I'm nostalgic, sometimes to a fault. Every now and again I catch myself maneuvering through the slippery slope of attempting to document [and, thus, remember] fucking EVERYTHING.<br /><br />This is unsustainable, distracting, and defeats the point of living--embracing and appreciating each moment partly <i>for</i> being ephemeral.<br /><br />"This too shall pass." The incantation that can render a sad man happy, and a happy man sad.<br /><br />So, these posts are going to have to be shorter for my own sake [and, I'm sure, for the sake of anyone reading them].<br /><br />We're leaving soon. Chiang Mai is starting to feel like a very pleasant, easygoing <i>Groundhog Day</i>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FmcH1lmEkRQ/UvHglDhNz0I/AAAAAAAAANU/sM8SFGL7q8U/s1600/IMG_0646.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-FmcH1lmEkRQ/UvHglDhNz0I/AAAAAAAAANU/sM8SFGL7q8U/s1600/IMG_0646.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sfx7Zzfo4gs/UvHgqIii00I/AAAAAAAAANc/wmYrKeTRwy8/s1600/IMG_0648.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sfx7Zzfo4gs/UvHgqIii00I/AAAAAAAAANc/wmYrKeTRwy8/s1600/IMG_0648.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />The merchandise in the night markets<i>, </i>day markets, and stores seem to all come from the same two or three suppliers--I've seen the <i>exact </i>same clothes and artifacts at a hundred different booths each day. The heady music played at the backpacker bars <i>consists of the same few songs every single night.</i> On cue, I'll hear "Summertime Sadness" followed by "Give Me Everything" followed by Katy fucking Perry. <br /><br />The people are mostly repeats, too. We keep running into other westerners at cafes or food carts; initially we'll always be excited to share a table and conversation with someone who is also traveling and speaks our language. Inevitably, we'll realize [sometimes not until after we've exchanged information and committed to spending a day together] that we have <i>nothing</i> in common and find each other's worldviews completely alienating.<br /><br />It's so easygoing <i>not</i> becoming a bit listless requires an active effort. I feel like Alex and I are Baloo and Mowgli, lumbering around the jungle eating ants and fruits at our leisure. Consequently, I'm beginning to bore myself.<br /><br />Where to next? Deciding between Chiang Rai and Nong Khai [leaning heavily towards the former].<br /><br /><b>Tourist Binge</b><br /><br />We decided to spend twenty-four hours doing standard "touristy" things, which we'd been avoiding. In general, I think tours are a way to preclude living: to be a spectator rather than a participant, and to possibly learn about other things in a very packaged way while making sure you don't learn <i>anything</i> about yourself. Tours are a way to focus more on taking canned photos that say "look how much fun I'm having" than on actually having fun.<br /><br />However, when else am I going to get to pay a few bucks to hug a tiger?<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FKu4KOsL0FQ/UvHY60FeqbI/AAAAAAAAAIY/Ph7LaIo5CAY/s1600/IMG_0361.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FKu4KOsL0FQ/UvHY60FeqbI/AAAAAAAAAIY/Ph7LaIo5CAY/s1600/IMG_0361.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3foNfuyLKu8/UvHZgSeIJvI/AAAAAAAAAIw/TgaVLQSfRPw/s1600/IMG_0438.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-3foNfuyLKu8/UvHZgSeIJvI/AAAAAAAAAIw/TgaVLQSfRPw/s1600/IMG_0438.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K1pVFkZgR9c/UvHYwgzfpYI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/cxgE6TruvYM/s1600/IMG_0494.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-K1pVFkZgR9c/UvHYwgzfpYI/AAAAAAAAAIQ/cxgE6TruvYM/s1600/IMG_0494.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PN23DQ_HsUY/UvHZQNqCeVI/AAAAAAAAAIo/mdYnkocPS_M/s1600/IMG_0472.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PN23DQ_HsUY/UvHZQNqCeVI/AAAAAAAAAIo/mdYnkocPS_M/s1600/IMG_0472.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />After reading about several unethical animal tourist attractions in Thailand where animals are abused or drugged into sedation, we were wary of Tiger Kingdom and initially set on avoiding it. However, after scrounging around a bit online for information, and talking to a few people who'd gone, we decided to give it a shot. At least as far as we could see, the tigers didn't show signs of being drugged and seemed pretty healthy, and seemed to have pretty trust-based bonds with their caretakers. Additionally, which tigers were open to be pet by tourists seemed to rotate around, so that individual tigers would get breaks and days off.<br /><br />As Alex put it, "Well...they're definitely being patronized, which is kind of embarrassing to look at, but they seem pretty content and healthy."<br /><br />I mean, we're guilty of patronizing them, too, as the photos above indicate [with the tiger trainers instructing us on how to pose, "Do mustache tail!"]...granted, the tigers didn't seem to give much of a shit, except for one adult female who either wanted to play with, or eat, Alex.<br /><br />It was awesome but we left with a bit of awkward ambivalence.<br /><br />The Siam Insect Zoo, on the other hand, was far less ideologically complicated [and also cheaper]. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VwV2Kg629dA/UvHdXrW6m8I/AAAAAAAAAJ0/DmMPdmn-Sho/s1600/IMG_0531.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VwV2Kg629dA/UvHdXrW6m8I/AAAAAAAAAJ0/DmMPdmn-Sho/s1600/IMG_0531.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IbOAUYJvMI4/UvHdbcWzgeI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/3V55aQluTFQ/s1600/IMG_0533.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IbOAUYJvMI4/UvHdbcWzgeI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/3V55aQluTFQ/s1600/IMG_0533.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zDuMPvCRSy8/UvHdLSyEpVI/AAAAAAAAAJc/-lTbSeKi2Cs/s1600/IMG_0506.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-zDuMPvCRSy8/UvHdLSyEpVI/AAAAAAAAAJc/-lTbSeKi2Cs/s1600/IMG_0506.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jDG_1vHoSQI/UvHdHkfeKgI/AAAAAAAAAJU/fISt4h37Eic/s1600/IMG_0513.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jDG_1vHoSQI/UvHdHkfeKgI/AAAAAAAAAJU/fISt4h37Eic/s1600/IMG_0513.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xlYuRGnij7c/UvHciQSaWcI/AAAAAAAAAI8/musMwY0TJ_A/s1600/IMG_0543.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xlYuRGnij7c/UvHciQSaWcI/AAAAAAAAAI8/musMwY0TJ_A/s1600/IMG_0543.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KqOX2g1Eowk/UvHdPupsviI/AAAAAAAAAJk/1BQUpIru2p8/s1600/IMG_0515.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KqOX2g1Eowk/UvHdPupsviI/AAAAAAAAAJk/1BQUpIru2p8/s1600/IMG_0515.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j7Wc37q7MMU/UvHdFV8FbQI/AAAAAAAAAJM/uN5YdNnn4eE/s1600/IMG_0512.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-j7Wc37q7MMU/UvHdFV8FbQI/AAAAAAAAAJM/uN5YdNnn4eE/s1600/IMG_0512.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NTR8vMP0WAU/UvHdTYwUvoI/AAAAAAAAAJs/263Zi7j7Iw0/s1600/IMG_0517.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NTR8vMP0WAU/UvHdTYwUvoI/AAAAAAAAAJs/263Zi7j7Iw0/s1600/IMG_0517.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IbOAUYJvMI4/UvHdbcWzgeI/AAAAAAAAAJ8/3V55aQluTFQ/s1600/IMG_0533.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VwV2Kg629dA/UvHdXrW6m8I/AAAAAAAAAJ0/DmMPdmn-Sho/s1600/IMG_0531.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0UbAz3Gg1pM/UvHde8iDdHI/AAAAAAAAAKE/JbeNOtSuvTA/s1600/IMG_0505.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0UbAz3Gg1pM/UvHde8iDdHI/AAAAAAAAAKE/JbeNOtSuvTA/s1600/IMG_0505.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Then we went on a tour of handicraft factories. This basically consisted of being picked up by a quirky guy who'd drive us somewhere, then hang out while we poked around and asked questions [and, of course, were coaxed into gift shops]. The factory workers would go about their business, seemingly indifferent to our presence.<br /><br />The cost for a group is 300 <i>baht.</i> So, $10 for the two of us to have a private driver for the morning take us to eight factories and an awesome and decently-priced lunch spot.<br /><br />First stop: paper umbrella factory. A couple guys near the entrance asked to paint waterproof designs on our t-shirts for 50 <i>baht, </i>so we let them. I got a butterfly doohickey that went with the shirt I was wearing, and Alex got a couple of elephants humping.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6qshmHFlCw4/UvHe5OSlKYI/AAAAAAAAAKU/9fOgf3zlt0c/s1600/IMG_0564.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6qshmHFlCw4/UvHe5OSlKYI/AAAAAAAAAKU/9fOgf3zlt0c/s1600/IMG_0564.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />The factory itself was really impressive--<i>every</i> little part of the umbrellas is completely cut using hand tools. Little knives and so on. Nothing is mechanized. The umbrellas ranged in size from a few inches to over six feet in diameter.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VyDY_DdCG4M/UvHfUeJ8IPI/AAAAAAAAALE/ZO4PQfwsd8o/s1600/IMG_0569.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-VyDY_DdCG4M/UvHfUeJ8IPI/AAAAAAAAALE/ZO4PQfwsd8o/s1600/IMG_0569.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rs8_ZDNHuJ8/UvHfPe17Q9I/AAAAAAAAAK8/0KGdiFpAEjE/s1600/IMG_0568.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rs8_ZDNHuJ8/UvHfPe17Q9I/AAAAAAAAAK8/0KGdiFpAEjE/s1600/IMG_0568.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lcYeXjT6TDs/UvHfKcClqnI/AAAAAAAAAK0/BcUPjbkbTbA/s1600/IMG_0567.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lcYeXjT6TDs/UvHfKcClqnI/AAAAAAAAAK0/BcUPjbkbTbA/s1600/IMG_0567.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e7Sv2JtOUXE/UvHfFCp-caI/AAAAAAAAAKs/PQVEq7SY2DU/s1600/IMG_0566.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-e7Sv2JtOUXE/UvHfFCp-caI/AAAAAAAAAKs/PQVEq7SY2DU/s1600/IMG_0566.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o1LUMkmZ6BY/UvHe-OJmj-I/AAAAAAAAAKc/guiA1hCQE70/s1600/IMG_0565.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-o1LUMkmZ6BY/UvHe-OJmj-I/AAAAAAAAAKc/guiA1hCQE70/s1600/IMG_0565.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DW3wbelr49Y/UvHfZRgcbMI/AAAAAAAAALM/BRIB3SBDjyc/s1600/IMG_0575.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-DW3wbelr49Y/UvHfZRgcbMI/AAAAAAAAALM/BRIB3SBDjyc/s1600/IMG_0575.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Next we visited a jewelry factory, which was far more intimidating--a huge building flanked by really uptight-looking and smartly-uniformed employees, following us watchfully. We weren't allowed to take photos, which is a shame, as the factory and showroom were pretty impressive.<br /><br />Third was a lacquerware factory, with all sorts of charming wooden doodads, all intricately hand-painted.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IY7zZ0cNoes/UvHflzRkkCI/AAAAAAAAALk/m5GttAHDb8s/s1600/IMG_0586.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IY7zZ0cNoes/UvHflzRkkCI/AAAAAAAAALk/m5GttAHDb8s/s1600/IMG_0586.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-grxwureeBL0/UvHfh1bcwDI/AAAAAAAAALc/d93unpOl7JQ/s1600/IMG_0577.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-grxwureeBL0/UvHfh1bcwDI/AAAAAAAAALc/d93unpOl7JQ/s1600/IMG_0577.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B64CTYU_B98/UvHfd96HZeI/AAAAAAAAALU/qO93pmCeJxY/s1600/IMG_0576.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-B64CTYU_B98/UvHfd96HZeI/AAAAAAAAALU/qO93pmCeJxY/s1600/IMG_0576.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Fourth was a silk factory, and possibly my favorite. The silkworms are raised until they form cocoons, which are then boiled and spun to extract the silk--it takes 50 cocoons to make one thread, and each cocoon yields about 500-800 meters of silk. They're then washed and tinted with natural dyes before they get strung up on the looms. One of the women there showed us how to spot real silk from imitation silk [which is all over the night markets].<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IyxAhoEF6p0/UvHfrJhSXGI/AAAAAAAAALs/4ytJRgf9bKA/s1600/IMG_0598.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IyxAhoEF6p0/UvHfrJhSXGI/AAAAAAAAALs/4ytJRgf9bKA/s1600/IMG_0598.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a>&nbsp;</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aeDL7wB1vRA/UvHgAFu-gkI/AAAAAAAAAMM/drS3GriLJeY/s1600/IMG_0607.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aeDL7wB1vRA/UvHgAFu-gkI/AAAAAAAAAMM/drS3GriLJeY/s1600/IMG_0607.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vO8nOb6mdfE/UvHgFEgBlWI/AAAAAAAAAMU/Gdyp9MysAYA/s1600/IMG_0614.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-vO8nOb6mdfE/UvHgFEgBlWI/AAAAAAAAAMU/Gdyp9MysAYA/s1600/IMG_0614.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l4r5Uhg0L_E/UvHf6xAk50I/AAAAAAAAAME/IcPqk_w3et8/s1600/IMG_0606.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-l4r5Uhg0L_E/UvHf6xAk50I/AAAAAAAAAME/IcPqk_w3et8/s1600/IMG_0606.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BSzxH4wP3Pw/UvHf1rwOrOI/AAAAAAAAAL8/TEz37TWKtNM/s1600/IMG_0602.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-BSzxH4wP3Pw/UvHf1rwOrOI/AAAAAAAAAL8/TEz37TWKtNM/s1600/IMG_0602.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-teODw6isee0/UvHfwZEnf-I/AAAAAAAAAL0/PJt65TKdKmM/s1600/IMG_0600.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-teODw6isee0/UvHfwZEnf-I/AAAAAAAAAL0/PJt65TKdKmM/s1600/IMG_0600.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Fifth: A jade factory. In the display cases along with the jade pieces were glasses of water, meant to help regulate humidity. There was an enormous pirate ship complete with jade chains that I wasn't allowed to take a photo of.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BNh4Y7aQNiY/UvHgMxAnQGI/AAAAAAAAAMk/aA7riVMBYC8/s1600/IMG_0628.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BNh4Y7aQNiY/UvHgMxAnQGI/AAAAAAAAAMk/aA7riVMBYC8/s1600/IMG_0628.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b9Sl6pwR3fU/UvHgIzeOBvI/AAAAAAAAAMc/lo5OtEnqipE/s1600/IMG_0627.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b9Sl6pwR3fU/UvHgIzeOBvI/AAAAAAAAAMc/lo5OtEnqipE/s1600/IMG_0627.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Next was a silver factory, where we were shown how to test for silver purity in objects...<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bgFPkPp1xys/UvHgRAp294I/AAAAAAAAAMs/PcuBiVPWT4k/s1600/IMG_0632.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bgFPkPp1xys/UvHgRAp294I/AAAAAAAAAMs/PcuBiVPWT4k/s1600/IMG_0632.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M12n7ljFms8/UvHggc9bAKI/AAAAAAAAANM/IgGL8NVb2Zk/s1600/IMG_0643.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M12n7ljFms8/UvHggc9bAKI/AAAAAAAAANM/IgGL8NVb2Zk/s1600/IMG_0643.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ChnTFlkxkqk/UvHgcHZn1UI/AAAAAAAAANE/YCNh2zj7r3k/s1600/IMG_0640.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ChnTFlkxkqk/UvHgcHZn1UI/AAAAAAAAANE/YCNh2zj7r3k/s1600/IMG_0640.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a8u60HEceFI/UvHgYDKzywI/AAAAAAAAAM8/Ka0W1k8eo00/s1600/IMG_0637.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a8u60HEceFI/UvHgYDKzywI/AAAAAAAAAM8/Ka0W1k8eo00/s1600/IMG_0637.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3oeISaGUJLA/UvHgUzrrPkI/AAAAAAAAAM0/617umXHP3PM/s1600/IMG_0636.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-3oeISaGUJLA/UvHgUzrrPkI/AAAAAAAAAM0/617umXHP3PM/s1600/IMG_0636.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />...followed by a couple "factories" that were mostly just shops. The first of these was full of Kashmir goods, including a <i>really</i> impressive teak elephant--all one piece, with a hollowed out interior containing sixteen baby elephants that had been carved through small holes in the big elephant's body--and hand-stitched tapestries made of silk and cashmere. A smooth-talking Indian salesman handed me a carved wooden box and told me he'd give us 1000 <i>baht</i> if I could open it [since it was a puzzle with a secret lock, which he didn't tell us] and I figured it out in about ten seconds, which left him pretty embarrassed [but not enough to stop trying to sell us expensive scarves].<br /><br />The final stop sold leather goods, though the "factory" itself seemed to only focus on stitching the already-processed leather into items. I would've liked to see them actually making leather, but we were burnt out by then anyhow.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bgFPkPp1xys/UvHgRAp294I/AAAAAAAAAMs/PcuBiVPWT4k/s1600/IMG_0632.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>So, our mission complete, we put the camera away and resumed normal living.<br /><br /><b>Re: The Anti-Monk</b><br /><br />We've spotted him again several times, a couple of them right by our guest house, which is on a rather nondescript little <i>soi</i> and not much of a destination unless you're staying there.<br /><br />We spotted him at one of the vendor booths run by a couple of little ladies selling typical tourist trinkets [noise-making wooden frogs, wristbands bearing phrases like <i>up butt no baby</i> and <i>i heart rape</i>], counting out cash. Excitedly, I ran across the street and tried to get a photo, but was so nervous/ambivalent the whole time ["Man, it is <i>really</i> creepy and maybe a bit dehumanizing for me to be doing this right now...oh-shit-I-think-he-saw-me..."] that I dilly-dallied and not only failed to take a decent photo before running away guiltily [the grainy, unfocused piece of shit below is the best one I got] but seeing him there under the light, which gave his face a rather eerie glow [he's got an eerily calm look about him, anyway--like a Guy Fawkes mask, sort of serene and smiling and sociopathic--which is largely why I wanted a photo of him] made him look like some sort of mobster-of-the-underworld, and I started making up all manner of possible scenarios about what he could be doing with the ladies at the booth. <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XjVScq7CsKI/UvHRnCEshII/AAAAAAAAAIA/alh3q653l-U/s1600/IMG_0345.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-XjVScq7CsKI/UvHRnCEshII/AAAAAAAAAIA/alh3q653l-U/s1600/IMG_0345.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />I really have gotten somewhat obsessed. Kind of glad no good photos came out--both in respect for the guy's privacy [really was kind of a dick move on my part but, hey, I got excited...and was possibly a bit drunk] and because my memory will embellish the image and make it seem more dramatic and exciting over time, whereas a photo would keep the memory in check and prevent me from romanticizing it.<br /><br />Sometimes it's best to toss out the empiricism in the name of deluded aesthetics.<br />&nbsp; <br />Also, I've realized that I probably <i>don't</i> want to solve the mystery. He's probably just a scammer/street performer in a robe...but not having this <i>confirmed</i> as a fact allows my imagination to get the better of me, which is much more fun. Sometimes knowledge isn't everything. <br /><br /><b>Disillusionment</b><br /><b> </b><br />Before heading on this trip, we'd read several warnings [on sites like Wikitravel that are supposed to serve as guides] about Thai people--to look out for scams, or possible threats.<br /><br />Since we've been here, the only unpleasantness we've seen is from other tourists [and holy <i>shit</i> can they be nasty, especially to the Thai natives...probably because they've read all the same Doomsday propaganda about how Thais are all trying to fuck them over].<br /><br />The other day, we went out on a scooter to find that flower restaurant again. We wound up in a strange back alley by a corner store that was closing up, so I went in and asked the old couple in charge if they knew where the place was. They didn't speak English, but the tiny little Thai man gave a huge smile and gestured for us to follow him--then ran out, hopped on his scooter, and led us there. It was a good mile or so out of the way, too.<br /><br />When we got there, it was closed, even though we'd shown up at their business hours. The man gestured for us to follow him again, and took us through a shortcut to get back on the road for the Old City, waving at us from his motorbike when he figured he'd taken us far enough and turning around to go home and we continued on, grinning.<br /><br />"You know...even though the place was closed, I've got this sense of closure. I think it just made my day how nice that man was."<br /><br />"...Meh, the place was a bit pricey, anyway. Almost three bucks a dish!"<br /><br />As another example, the lady who runs our guest house. She works seven days a week managing three guesthouses and a restaurant, and renting out scooters. Her English is good and we've also heard her speak to guests in French and Mandarin. When our scooter got a flat the other day and stranded us outside of town [a misadventure I'll get to in a second], she told us not to worry about getting it fixed or paying for it even though it was technically our bad, she's not a stickler if we pay after check-out time, and she's changed our sheets even though we told her not to worry about it.<br /><br />Every day, we see several douche bags--usually young and trendy Americans, Australians, or Europeans--come up with an absolutely disgusting level of entitlement.<br /><br />"I'm sorry, all the rooms are full today except our luxury suite on the top floor--it's 700 <i>baht. </i>You can look around and come back if you can't find another room--I'll be here for a few more hours. If you need a place to stay just for the night, you can always find a cheaper place tomorrow, since it's getting late."<br /><br />"...And I have to go up fucking <i>stairs </i>to waste my money? Uh, yeah, no thanks, you've wasted <i>enough</i> of my time." And off huffed yet another pretty and wealthy-looking brat with a backpack. Incidentally, 700 <i>baht</i> is still just over $20.<br /><br />Sure, a lot of locals will quote you higher prices, but worst case scenario just means you get duped into paying more than you might've gotten away with had you known better; the <i>only reason they succeed</i> is because even the "rip-off" marked up price sounds cheap to westerners. If you don't know better, you might wind up paying $7 for a cab ride that should've been $3, big fucking deal.<br /><br />It's understandable, too--even if you're a poor American, if you're in their country to begin with, you're probably rich by Thai standards. Their minimum wage amounts to the equivalent of $10 total for a full workday. If we had aliens coming to our country who were comparatively as loaded, we'd be trying to snag their money, too.<br /><br />And even when they're trying to "rip you off", it's sort of a game--they do it good-naturedly, not with any true ill will. Alex and I have gotten considerably better at haggling, which is kind of a sport. You smile, you shit-talk, you act shocked and affronted, but always while smiling. A woman will pretend to be angry, turn to Alex, and point at me, saying, "She want for one hundred baht! She make joke for me--beautiful, but no very smart." A man will plead desperately that our asking price is lower than what he himself paid for an item...but eventually he'll budge, because, after all, he was lying, and knew that we knew it.<br /><br />Another reason I want to get out of Chiang Mai is because I'm starting to become unfairly cynical towards the other tourists here--at least the ones I perceive as belonging to the same category of tourist as the rich kids pouring into our guesthouse lobby each day.<br /><br />So many people here seem to want an experience that is "authentic", but also easy. We've met people who will complain of all the tourists, or how the hill tribe treks aren't "authentic" and are "commercialized" and designed to get you to buy stuff [...no shit, you're<i> paying money </i>to go point and stare at a bunch of people in their "natural habitat" like they're zoo animals]...and will then complain, "Yeah, I went to Myanmar, but over there there's like, no Internet and it's hard to find ATMs. And <i>no one there spoke English.</i>"<br /><br />Dude, fuck you.<br /><br />Last night, after hanging out for a while eating chicken hearts and livers with Nathan [whom we'd met earlier] and a couple who'd recognized Alex's shirt from Burning Man, Alex and I got legitimately drunk for our first time in Thailand, which served as a good release valve for me to let off some of my frustration. I went around, sneaking up to trashed Euro bros pissing on fences, spitting beer into their pee streams from the other side, yelling "Bpen ngai bang?" and running away as they squealed in surprise, and otherwise fucking with people and being a twerp, albeit a harmless one. I predict something similar happening tonight.<br /><br />All in good fun?<br /><br />One conversation we had left me feeling a lot better about everything. Over <i>kao soi</i> we overheard a white guy [who may have been a Kiwi, but we couldn't tell for sure] reading one of the menus in Thai, and struck up a conversation [since I'm at the point now where I can slooooowly read pretty much anything in Thai, as long as the font isn't too weird]. He was an odd character: he seemed like he would've been in place in Silicon Valley, a mildly outdoorsy nerdy engineer type, but had spent much of the last couple decades wandering into random small Thai towns and hitchhiking.<br /><br />He was very friendly, but avoided talking about himself. When we asked him why he was here, whether he was working or living or traveling, he'd said, "Oh, you know, it's easy to live here," and changed the subject.<br /><br />But he took an approach to Thailand more simple and organic than any other travelers we'd met. "I haven't been on one fucking trek, I haven't ridden an elephant. I just talk to people, eat, and wander around, see what there is to do. I trained in Thai massage for a while and practiced at a couple temples. It's just living--like living anywhere else. This isn't some 'other' place--some fake world, or theme park, as many like to treat it."<br /><br />After a long chat by the cart, he introduced himself as Matt, got up and went along on his merry way, matter-of-factly. It felt a lot more genuine than some of the awkward partings we've had with others, sprinkled with, "Oh, I need your contact info," or "Yeah, I'd love to hang out again," that aren't so much sincere as they are ways to make the goodbyes a bit smoother. Having one great conversation with someone can, but certainly doesn't always, mean you'll have anything to talk about given a "next time". Figuring out how to tell the difference between what should be a one-time encounter and what could be a life-long friend is a bit of a challenge, but I've been getting better at it.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mEGbf3T2I9c/UvHfAeAN0QI/AAAAAAAAAKk/ZqjcU-yeSlM/s1600/IMG_0554.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mEGbf3T2I9c/UvHfAeAN0QI/AAAAAAAAAKk/ZqjcU-yeSlM/s1600/IMG_0554.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Spirit house in Your House's lobby</td></tr></tbody></table>One of my favorite experiences so far has actually been of a completely failed plan to visit the quarry, a sort of obscure local secret-ish, supposedly a great spot for cliff jumping and swimming.<br /><br />We rented a scooter, got about twenty minutes or so out of town, and got a flat. The next several hours consisted of us pushing the thing along the side of the highway, looking for gas stations, filling up with air, and driving another 3 k or so until the tire flattened out again, then continuing to push it.<br /><br />&nbsp;An ex-pat on a bike came by and helpfully went off to investigate where the nearest gas stations were [and check to see if any of the repair shops were closed--they all were], and we found a few cool knickknacks lying in the sidewalk, and had our antics laughed at good-naturedly by passing locals crammed in the back of pick-up trucks.<br /><br />Eventually, we managed to spot, and hail, a <i>songtaew</i> that could take us back into town--though, knowing we were desperate, she wouldn't budge from 200 <i>baht. </i>We really had no leverage, though, so we shrugged and laughed this off.<br /><br />It's the conversations and revelations we had, and the dumb shit we laughed about, during those few hours that I think I've gotten the most out of.<br /><br />...Uh, so much for shorter blog posts. Chiang Mai's slow-going like that. Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-30255297136228473822014-02-01T23:18:00.002-08:002014-02-04T20:12:14.065-08:00Manwood Dorking [sign spotted in Chiang Mai]<b>Chiang Mai, Thailand</b><br /><b><br /></b>Our departure from Bangkok couldn't have been better-timed. Upon returning to Terrance's on Sunday evening [after getting some phenomenal&nbsp;<i>som tam,</i>&nbsp;or green papaya salad] he informed us that the protest leader had just been shot dead.<br /><br />We spent that night on a sleeper bus along with Jones and April, during which we all attempted to study the Thai alphabet using children's books with minimal success, and all woke up about an hour before our 7:20 a.m. arrival because they'd cranked the air conditioning down to nothing-degrees. When we arrived, we shared a <i>songtaew </i>[that is, a pick-up truck with two benches and a roof in the back serving as a taxi] with some Canadians to get to the Old City [since we'd failed to watch what the locals had done in order to leave the station, which probably would've revealed a cheaper way of getting into town].<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YbLC-fKUIbw/Uu3p36WCuQI/AAAAAAAAAFA/-AbmHXvfyds/s1600/IMG_0202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-YbLC-fKUIbw/Uu3p36WCuQI/AAAAAAAAAFA/-AbmHXvfyds/s1600/IMG_0202.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VK9zNYu8390/Uu3rnjhHvWI/AAAAAAAAAF4/pda57Suuhcc/s1600/IMG_0201.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VK9zNYu8390/Uu3rnjhHvWI/AAAAAAAAAF4/pda57Suuhcc/s1600/IMG_0201.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Closing thoughts on Bangkok: New York City is a fat, narcoleptic grandpa in comparison [whereas Bangkok is some scruffy-but-vaguely-glamorous young thing you might run into on some altered night in a dive bar outside your normal neck of the woods, charismatic but possibly a bit misleading, maybe subtly hopped up on some varietal of white powder, beckoning you congenially to follow him down to his subtropolis].<br /><br />Summarily, Bangkok lived up to its stereotypes. For locals and tourists alike, it seemed like the two main things to do during the day were eat and shop [but it was easy to see why].&nbsp;At night, the eating and shopping continues behind the nocturnal backdrop of colorful bars, strobes and lasers, lanky hookers, cheap massage parlors [which, by the way, <i>do</i> offer--and sometimes insist upon--the delivery of happy endings] and the penetrating thrum of<i>&nbsp;nnts-nnts-nnts</i>.<br /><br />I loved it, but it was making me feel sluggish and stupid all the time, like my brain was tapped out on the constant stimulation. Everything was so new, even the daily walks to the BTS--past little boys dangling fishing poles over a city bridge overhung with barbaric trees that remind us we'd be in a jungle if not for urbanization, past lightning-fast fry cooks chugging down a bottle of Chang in between serving ten people a minute, past a horde of ladyboys foraging through a two-mile succession of clothing vendors--felt dense and fast and bright. Of course, it was partly culture shock--those sights have now become mundanities--but Bangkok still gets some credit for being altogether more alive than the cities I've been used to. <br /><b><br /></b>Chiang Mai, on the other hand, makes me feel almost too relaxed and on top of things. For better or for worse, it's almost too easy: our private room is $7 total per night; if we want to get out of town, we can rent a fast scooter right downstairs for $6; within twenty feet of the guest house are a million food carts at all hours of the day, each cheaper and better than the last; every conceivable brand of nightlife is reachable within a three-minute walk; and, with the moat around the Old City, it's virtually impossible to get lost.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RWVFu0jzDoU/Uu3qFXTiONI/AAAAAAAAAFI/RXYyxPf_sVY/s1600/IMG_0205.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RWVFu0jzDoU/Uu3qFXTiONI/AAAAAAAAAFI/RXYyxPf_sVY/s1600/IMG_0205.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />On the one hand, the place has sucked us into wanting to just kick back and live here for a while [which seems to happen to a lot of people here]; on the other, it feels too comfortable and I feel like I'm cheating, like I need to pursue a more rugged destination. Despite the complete dissimilarity between here and anywhere I've thought of as "home", being here makes me feel like a homebody.<br /><br />Tucked in among Thai culture and hundreds of majestic <i>wats</i>&nbsp;[Alex: "It's almost disappointing just how <i>many</i>&nbsp;temples there are. They're gorgeous, but they're just fucking everywhere; after a day you're desensitized and basically see them as road blocks."] is a sort of Hippie Disneyland Village of Hostels, which I suppose can be seen as bad or good--as a cultural parasite or a natural progression of the city's adaptation to global tourism. At any rate, Chiang Mai is a gallery for every stereotype of expat and tourist: granola festie-kid types, Golden Anniversary re-honeymooners, douchebaggy European spring breakers, and so on. Homemade flyers in all the restaurants of a guy who'll give you dreadlocks, or a woman who does Tarot readings. Ex-pat cafes serving ayurvedic teas with coconut milk and stevia. And so on.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvsmYfxKpvY/Uu3tnK4zLfI/AAAAAAAAAHA/YcVSU3tcAus/s1600/IMG_0288.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvsmYfxKpvY/Uu3tnK4zLfI/AAAAAAAAAHA/YcVSU3tcAus/s1600/IMG_0288.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>Quick answers to my previous two questions:</div><div><br /></div><div>Mosquito-wise, it seems the locals mainly rely on diet [lemongrass and garlic, particularly]. Sometimes people even bring a bit of lemongrass around with them, in their pocket or some such. Other than that, mosquito coils and fans. Not much else. [Still went ahead and got a bottle of citronella spray, since I've been shoving garlic into my face and am not sure it's actually working.]<br /><br />Temple-wise, it's kind of a no-brainer now that I know. Thai people [and people who can pass for Thai] get in free, and don't really go to the big swanky temples to worship [they've got their own temples for that--the same way Catholics don't necessarily go hang out in Notre Dame every Sunday]. Well, hurp dap.<br /><br />Fun fact: We've been enjoying Thailand's longest cold season in ten years [they usually last a couple weeks; this one's lasted for months]. The other morning the cold was "record-breaking", at a frigid 15° C [that's about 60° F]. To me, this seems like great weather, but there have already been at least sixty-three Thai deaths related to the cold, and when we've gone out at times when there's been a mid-80-ish going, several people are walking around in sweaters, winter jackets, and long underwear.<br /><br />...Yeah, so. We've yet to find out what they consider "hot" to be.</div><b><br /></b><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HcfAjwx2wFI/Uu3rDX7zdgI/AAAAAAAAAFg/PI-Ue5gBZpM/s1600/IMG_0225.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5oKuN2q2URQ/Uu3q2eHuSSI/AAAAAAAAAFY/ytCWHneuWB0/s1600/IMG_0218.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div><b>Bua Tong Waterfall</b><br /><br />Easily one of the coolest places I've ever been. I've never been much for a good "view" or for "scenery"--I like to interact with things. I like mountains I can climb up or ski down or camp underneath, and lakes I can swim in. If all I want to do is look at a place, I can pick up a postcard.<br /><br />This waterfall? There's a wonky set of steps alongside of it that'll take you to the bottom where, thanks to calcium carbonate deposits on the face, you can walk back up it <i>on the face</i>, like a steep bulbous staircase. It's also known as the "sticky waterfall". There's not a whole lot I can say that pictures won't say better.<br /><br />Starting from the bottom, working up: <br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5oKuN2q2URQ/Uu3q2eHuSSI/AAAAAAAAAFY/ytCWHneuWB0/s1600/IMG_0218.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-5oKuN2q2URQ/Uu3q2eHuSSI/AAAAAAAAAFY/ytCWHneuWB0/s1600/IMG_0218.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7Del_WVeWEc/Uu3rNvG2ZiI/AAAAAAAAAFo/iqncUjlGGMw/s1600/IMG_0229.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-7Del_WVeWEc/Uu3rNvG2ZiI/AAAAAAAAAFo/iqncUjlGGMw/s1600/IMG_0229.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HcfAjwx2wFI/Uu3rDX7zdgI/AAAAAAAAAFg/PI-Ue5gBZpM/s1600/IMG_0225.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-HcfAjwx2wFI/Uu3rDX7zdgI/AAAAAAAAAFg/PI-Ue5gBZpM/s1600/IMG_0225.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HjoWte9pvaw/Uu3rgGL7RhI/AAAAAAAAAFw/zfGWG0C1EgI/s1600/IMG_0234.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HjoWte9pvaw/Uu3rgGL7RhI/AAAAAAAAAFw/zfGWG0C1EgI/s1600/IMG_0234.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xejaZDZRE98/Uu3r82xCcMI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/3EWn5rqtLLk/s1600/IMG_0244.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xejaZDZRE98/Uu3r82xCcMI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/3EWn5rqtLLk/s1600/IMG_0244.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-H487Q1bmWBY/Uu3rzrGC_AI/AAAAAAAAAGI/36jyBpYdARg/s1600/IMG_0237.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A24jgEtrb0c/Uu3ssiYtOLI/AAAAAAAAAGo/p9mu1zBo7fU/s1600/IMG_0261.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-A24jgEtrb0c/Uu3ssiYtOLI/AAAAAAAAAGo/p9mu1zBo7fU/s1600/IMG_0261.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jkbGxsXQRnA/Uu3tHuXod2I/AAAAAAAAAGw/NQVMOxOrXAY/s1600/IMG_0275.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jkbGxsXQRnA/Uu3tHuXod2I/AAAAAAAAAGw/NQVMOxOrXAY/s1600/IMG_0275.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xOM9YAiSi-U/Uu3sg-wms9I/AAAAAAAAAGg/QjchQmrYRRw/s1600/IMG_0258.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xOM9YAiSi-U/Uu3sg-wms9I/AAAAAAAAAGg/QjchQmrYRRw/s1600/IMG_0258.JPG" height="320" width="213" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1tj8cNRpGQ/Uu3qq_bs0pI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/1nx2ZIigFRI/s1600/IMG_0210.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Y1tj8cNRpGQ/Uu3qq_bs0pI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/1nx2ZIigFRI/s1600/IMG_0210.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4kI02tZEoz8/Uu3tXKTCq2I/AAAAAAAAAG4/NI2qdt6MN1g/s1600/IMG_0209.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4kI02tZEoz8/Uu3tXKTCq2I/AAAAAAAAAG4/NI2qdt6MN1g/s1600/IMG_0209.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4kI02tZEoz8/Uu3tXKTCq2I/AAAAAAAAAG4/NI2qdt6MN1g/s1600/IMG_0209.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><br /></a></div>Getting to it involved renting scooters and driving more than an hour into the countryside past rice paddies, clusters of banana trees, and temples. We stopped on the way for some fermented pork rice and deep-fried sweet potatoes--and a local vendor let me sample some crickets, which were actually quite good.<br /><br />On the way back, we drove past the site of an accident--all that was left was a smashed scooter and puddle of blood--which had us feeling a bit apprehensive about navigating the rush hour traffic. Consequently, we lost Jones and April on their scooter, and we'd been following them to get home since they had the directions. Our phone was dead, and our map was in English, which wasn't helpful.<br /><br />After the initial frustration of being lost, I was overtaken in a new sense of freedom. So far, it's almost felt like this trip has been too easy--exhausting, perhaps, but posing no true challenges.<br /><br />Granted, I'm not saying this was really a challenge, either--we were basically already in town and found our way back after about five minutes of gesturing on a map to some Thais in a shop--but it gave me a chance to reflect on what's always appealed to me about traveling in the States. The sense of uncertainty and risk. For some reason, I've been a lot more wary here, always thinking of tomorrow [in terms of money, what we'll do, visa logistics, possible issues...] and while I haven't been overanxious, the whole <i>point</i>&nbsp;of my travels in the states has been to free myself of any place and time other than the here and now, and traveling abroad shouldn't be fundamentally different.<br /><br /><b>The Anti-Monk</b><br /><br />That first night, while navigating through the bazaar stalls, I almost ran headlong into a monk [fortunately, I didn't--monks aren't supposed to touch women; if they do, they have to go through arduous cleansing rituals], who gestured for me to move aside, then approached Alex and put a string of beads around his neck. He started rubbing Alex's chest and whispering things that we couldn't understand, and made Alex kiss the necklace. Then he asked Alex for 100 <i>baht</i> and, when Alex shook his head, chuckling, took the necklace back and walked away.<br /><br />"I...don't think that guy was a real monk. That, or he's a rebellious one. A lot of the monks get offended if you even try to give them money--why would one be going around asking for it?"<br /><br />"I bet it was a test--maybe he was whispering something like, 'I'm going to try to take the necklace off of you. If you don't let me do it, you'll win Enlightenment.'"<br /><br />Since that night, we've run into him at least once per night, always only going after young white men [he's tried to get Alex again at least two or three times and walks off with a bitter smile and what sound like Thai pejoratives each time we start laughing].<br /><br />I might be developing a bit of an obsession with him. We'll see him in two different spots in one night, miles apart. The other night, he was sitting on a bench outside of our guesthouse. I would've struck up a conversation with him but he seems to speak no English [and my Thai isn't good enough to transcend basic niceties]. He's<i> everywhere we are.</i><br /><br />So.<br /><br />One: Who the hell is this guy? Is he a real monk?<br /><br /><b>Nocturnal Everything</b><br /><br />I think this place has the right idea. Chiang Mai isn't exactly metropolitan, and yet it comes alive at night. There are a million food carts, most of the restaurants in town stay open until at least midnight [as do many other shops, including bookstores and cafes], huge marketplaces and night-only shopping centers, random shows [many of them free], and an absurd row of backpacker bars that felt like Bourbon Street at Mardi Gras when we went on a Monday night.<br /><br />On our first night, we headed out to the night bazaar with Jones [April had passed out], all hankering for a beer. Dirtbags that we are, we opted to go buy beer at the corner store and then bring it into a food court with our dinner [right next to some Khmer dancers--easily the most benign form of dance I've ever seen, like stylized somnambulism...except for the crazy-triple-jointed-backward-flexed fingers, which is the one interesting thing about the dance style, and which hurt my joints to look at].<br /><br />Along with the standard Chang [which I've actually gotten pretty fond of...I've heard it referred to as "Asian PBR" or similar, but I think it's actually a fuckload better than your standard cheap beer] we grabbed a bottle of some mystery booze because it was 30 <i>baht</i>&nbsp;for a large.<br /><br />Mistake. It tasted like fish oil with grape juice. We all decided we had to choke it down to get our money's worth, and after a couple attempts <i>each </i>deserted the thing, still more than half-full.<br /><br />We found April drinking by a closed leather workshop with two friendly and inebriated Thai men with a guitar, both of whom were named Egg [though one of them also answered to "Johnny Depp"] and a rad Australian girl named Ella, who introduced herself to us in a weird Asian-y-Pidgin-esque pseudo-accent before adjusting: "Oh, sorry--I've been hanging out with Thais so much it's got me speaking in broken English to compensate."<br /><br />After some general merrymaking all of us left Egg and Egg to go check out the backpacker bars, a condensed block about a hundred feet long, to meet up with Ning. I can best describe it as a really compressed Bourbon Street with a dash of Burning Man. A Thai band was covering Pantera in one bar that was next door to a reggae bar that was next door to some place playing hard rock; in the middle of the row were two nightclubs complete with lasers and fog machines blaring dubstep at one another as if in a face-off; the places were so bloated with shitfaced Commonwealthers that they spilled out into the street, which served as an extension of the conjoined dance party. <br /><br />"Isn't it a Monday night?"<br /><br />We all decided to make the most of our situation by mini flash-mobbing unsuspecting clubbers on the dance floor, and took turns selecting victims. One by one, we'd squeeze our way through the mash of people and circle around our victim--and then spontaneously start jumping/dancing/fist-pumping insanely when we had him completely surrounded.<br /><br />First guy, who was clearly blacked out, was stoked, and started whooping at us in what sounded like gibberish and laughing. Second guy <i>freaked</i> the fuck out and had bolted straight out of the club within three seconds.<br /><br />And so on.<br /><br />We saw the maybe-monk there, too, provocatively rubbing the nipples of some bro in another loud nightclub, while a six-year old Thai boy leaned stood and watched while leaning against the bar. Not something you see every day. Jones decided he had to go "get a blessing" for himself, and came back reporting that it was an unprecedentedly erotic experience, what with all the nipple-rubbing and mumbling.</div><div><br />And so on.<br /><br />April and Jones headed out a day or so later, which reminded me of one of my favorite aspects of traveling--sort of sloughing together a temporary "crew" of people you've just met, hanging out more-or-less as you would with your close friends from back home, for a couple days or a couple weeks, and then parting ways just as simply. About five minutes after we said goodbye to the two of them, we met up with Alberto, a guy we'd spent a single night talking to back at the hostel in Reno. A couple days later, we met a guy named Nathan for the first time after a mutual friend insisted upon it via Facebook; we wound up talking ceaselessly for several hours [one thing that stood out to me was our mutual observations of the incompatibilities between Buddhism and Buddhist culture--similar to Christianity and Christian culture--and grappling with consequent disillusionment].<br /><br />There's something elegant and genuine about it, as opposed to socializing back home--when you're a fixture somewhere, it gets easy to fall into a rut of hanging out with the same people all the time, regardless of whether you actually want to [and, in the cases of shared mutual friends, regardless of whether you even <i>like</i> everyone you're hanging out with], because they're available.<br /><br /><b>And so on</b><br /><br />It's been pretty mellow. We've spent a lot of time teaching ourselves to read and write in Thai in a decidedly New Agey tea house in an upstairs loft overlooking the bustling-but-cozy <i>soi</i> we've affectionately come to think of as our "neighborhood", drinking fancy Ayurvedic teas and lemongrass kombucha while flopped over Thai massage mats and pillows. In one corner are hula hoops and guitars to tinker on, in another are random goods for sale [diva cups, natural face creams, flower of life stickers]. The place is run by an Austrian ex-pat hippie girl and hosts yoga classes, movie nights, open mic nights. While I initially came here with what I now think was a bit of a naive purist attitude of what is/isn't "real" Thai culture...I've begun to realize that all of this stuff <i>is</i> a part of contemporary Chiang Mai culture--it's a melting pot, and the natives seem to have embraced this.<br /><br />Lots of wandering around, sitting in parks, trying new food. Eating has been our primary pastime, I'd say. Figuring out our favorites--like Thai iced tea served in a giant plastic bag stabbed with a straw [the packaging here is pretty insane--you have to be pretty assertive if you don't want every small purchase you make to get stuck into five different plastic bags].<br /><br />Speaking of eating, I forced myself to try durian no fewer than three times, and hereby declare that it resembles soggy garbage in both taste and texture.<br /><br />The <b>Ladyboy Cabaret</b>, a free nightly show we came across unintentionally while hanging out with Alberto. We sat down in front of two unfinished Heinekens, which we helped ourselves to [Alberto: "Is it really beer, or is it piss?" Us: "It's piss."] I quite enjoyed the guys' noticeable ambivalence as we watched what appeared to be several scantily-clad and legitimately gorgeous women waggling flamboyantly on stage. A couple acts involved a hot "woman" transforming [via costume changes and make-up remover and wigs] into a handsome dude. Pretty killer, especially for the price tag.<br /><br />As I suspected, massage up north is far superior to everything I found in Bangkok. In particular, I really wanted to go get a <b>Nerve Touch</b> massage, a specialized style of Thai massage that I've trained in. Easily one of the most effective massages I've ever gotten. It's been days since then, and we both feel fucking phenomenal. Without realizing it, Alex had gotten a massage from the current Nerve Touch instructor [the one before her was the founder of the style, who taught my own instructor in Nevada City]...and when we got to the register they informed us that the price for his massage was 950 <i>baht.</i> Luckily for us, they were really gracious when they saw how shocked we were and honored the normal price, realizing that we hadn't known. [Though, to put it in perspective, that'd <i>still</i> be a fucking steal by American standards, especially for how good of a massage it was: less than $30 for an hour and a half].<br /><br />We also spent a day at&nbsp;<b>Huay Tung Tao</b>, a lake about twenty minutes outside of town, eating lunch [and subsequently falling asleep] in a bamboo hut over the water. It wound up being pricier than we'd expected after the scooter rental, entrance fees, and pricey food, but was worth it. That being said, there's so much amazing free stuff to do in the area that I don't see myself going back.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bo_G1-g68Qo/Uu3uhDpI__I/AAAAAAAAAHo/I86P0Anu-JA/s1600/IMG_0325.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bo_G1-g68Qo/Uu3uhDpI__I/AAAAAAAAAHo/I86P0Anu-JA/s1600/IMG_0325.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OFJAVVWFYYo/Uu3uAtSuTSI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/_YOY_AcctuY/s1600/IMG_0314.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-OFJAVVWFYYo/Uu3uAtSuTSI/AAAAAAAAAHQ/_YOY_AcctuY/s1600/IMG_0314.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wRfpmFJagBw/Uu3ud83iC9I/AAAAAAAAAHg/DmCgyGL66gQ/s1600/IMG_0324.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-wRfpmFJagBw/Uu3ud83iC9I/AAAAAAAAAHg/DmCgyGL66gQ/s1600/IMG_0324.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1idf3E5m9ac/Uu3ulOXwiEI/AAAAAAAAAHw/TUlEauU54ts/s1600/IMG_0326.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-1idf3E5m9ac/Uu3ulOXwiEI/AAAAAAAAAHw/TUlEauU54ts/s1600/IMG_0326.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />We've spent two days looking for Saimok Kap Dokmai, an edible flower restaurant that's supposedly ten minutes out of town, but fucking <i>impossible</i>&nbsp;to find. The other night we gave up after almost three hours of circling around on a scooter, backtracking and asking for directions a million times. At one point we'd turned down a deserted road and saw a bunch of people walking towards something...so we followed, thinking it might take us to a night market or some other event where we could re-orient ourselves.<br /><br />We were at a temple. There were eerie lights [candles, glowsticks, and lasers] and some intensely somber chanting. People were sitting in silence, and we couldn't see what they were all staring at. Blood sugar critically low, it took us a second of whispering to each other in the back to realize we weren't at a market or other public event.<br /><br />"Whoa, is this some sort of occult ritual?"<br /><br />"Uh. Anna. I don't think we should be here..."<br /><br />It was then that we saw what appeared to be a casket, or at least a shrine decked out with some guy's picture. Whoops.<br /><br />Two: Find this damn flower restaurant. It looks fucking awesome [flower salads, flower drinks, fried flowers...]. Even if it means renting a tuk-tuk. Or a guide. I'm too proud to let it go after we've invested so much time into it. 8P<br /><br />Three: Most of the beggars we've seen have been amputees. I want to know why that is. My imagination's gone nuts. Are they being exploited by a con artist who's cutting off their tongues and limbs? Are they all victims of workplace injuries [wouldn't be too surprising--we've had to tiptoe around people welding in the sidewalk without so much as a pair of safety goggles or long pants]? Is there some leprosy-esque outbreak affecting the local poor?<br /><br />And so on.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nvsmYfxKpvY/Uu3tnK4zLfI/AAAAAAAAAHA/YcVSU3tcAus/s1600/IMG_0288.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DhIaRo9QNMI/Uu3tyS6YR3I/AAAAAAAAAHI/c23MxX2HPuw/s1600/IMG_0293.JPG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DhIaRo9QNMI/Uu3tyS6YR3I/AAAAAAAAAHI/c23MxX2HPuw/s1600/IMG_0293.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-66305493398414449072014-01-25T18:40:00.001-08:002014-01-25T19:41:30.043-08:00Calibrating to the City of Angels<b>Bangkok, Thailand</b><br /><br />After checking out of CitiChic, we headed to our host's condo, which had us hunting through a long meandering <i>soi</i> and crossing a bridge. The change in scenery gave us perspective on where we'd just come from. Our hotel<i>&nbsp;</i>had been in the middle of a clump of fancy resorts, profoundly congested with thousands of tourists of the grumpy-wealthy-sedentary-American ilk, and particular locals who hung out there putting on acts expressly in hope of ripping off ignorant honeymooners. [It was later mentioned to us that Nana is one of the most debaucherous/loud/tourist-heavy/hooker-heavy areas in Bangkok.]<br /><br />This new neighborhood, while far from remote, felt more like real life: less flashy, less fantasy-oriented. People went about their own business, indifferent to us for the most part.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mRWvoLbwG8Y/UuR3SrvXB2I/AAAAAAAAADc/1igispslKOQ/s1600/IMG_0171.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mRWvoLbwG8Y/UuR3SrvXB2I/AAAAAAAAADc/1igispslKOQ/s1600/IMG_0171.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Apparently we've been adjusting, too, without consciously trying to do so. Each time we walked down the same route from our hotel to the Nana BTS station, fewer scammers and drivers took notice of us, and the ones that did seemed less convicted and persistent. By the time we headed out for good yesterday morning, maybe one person half-heartedly tried to beckon us for a ride. We took this as a sign that we're looking less overwhelmed and disoriented by the outside observer.&nbsp;[Also, we've gotten far better at crossing the busier streets that look like drunken-NASCAR-rush-hour all the time, which have no traffic lights or stop signs to quell the congested flow of insane drivers.]<br /><br /><b>Siam Protests</b><br /><br />We arrived at Terrance's place, a sixth-floor condo in a nice complex with two large swimming pools. He wasn't at home, but his roommate Jones was--a dude from San Francisco staying in Bangkok for a month during a year-long traveling stint.<br /><br />Arbitrarily, Alex and I decided to head to the water taxi and see where it took us. We had to transfer at the Siam station, and had heard there were a couple large malls at which we could buy a few things we [a prepaid SIM card, a map, a money belt, a pair of long pants so Alex could visit the temples without causing offense...].<br /><br />After wandering disoriented around the malls [just when we thought we'd adjusted to the chaos of Bangkok, here we were completely unable to figure out what direction we'd just come from again], we decided to head down to the street, where a huge marketplace was set up that seemed to stretch on for miles--looking down from an overpass, we couldn't see either end of the it.<br /><br />Walking around in it, buying more strange and amazing street food [my favorite was a dessert thing that looked like a blob of green jello stuck to a pancake, but was probably made of mung bean], and started noticing a lot of the protest activity ramping up. Hundreds of stalls were selling cheap accessories like whistles and headbands garnished with red, white, and blue [colors of the Thai flag], as well as T-shirts all emblazoned with some variation of, "Shutdown Bangkok, Restart Thailand." Uniformed officials directed people through gateways set up throughout the marketplace, and as we sat down to eat a thing of rice-and-so-on, a parade began to stomp through the street. The apocalyptic drums were soon drowned out by whistling--it seemed everyone there had bought cheap whistles and were huffing into them gleefully.<br /><br />Having read about it in the news, we'd asked Andrew about it over breakfast the other day.<br /><br />"Oh, they're protesting against having elected officials running Thailand."<br /><br />"...What? Are you sure that's what they're protesting? Or that's the whole story? That seems pretty counterintuitive."<br /><br />"As far as I know, yeah."<br /><br />"Has there been any violence?"<br /><br />"Only from the terrorists," his son chipped in.<br /><br />"Who?"<br /><br />"I don't know, but apparently there's terrorist involvement of some kind."<br /><br />This didn't satisfy me.<br /><br />Question one: Figure out what the protests are actually about.<br /><br />Later, as Alex and I sat watching the parade in Siam, one thing struck us. "Things seem so much more civil. If this happened in the States there'd already be cops and teargas; protestors over there aren't even allowed to use mics to amplify their voices."<br /><br />"I have a hard time believing these are crazy radicals protesting for an oligarchy. They just seem like college kids and middle-class whoevers."<br /><br />Kind of put things our own country in perspective.<br /><br /><b>Water Taxi and Wat Arun</b><br /><br />We took a water taxi down the river. Essentially like a subway, but on a very fast boat in the water, with open sides that let in the view and the breeze. At each stop, the boat would slam violently into the dock, which was cushioned by the impact by a row of old tires. On the way we passed dilapidated neighborhoods with trees growing through the buildings, being taken back by nature; extremely swanky resorts on the waterfront; and several magnificent temples.<br /><br />We got out at the Wat Arun stop, which we'd been told that morning was worth a visit, and took another small boat to get to the other side of the river.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r_UCHn1Sf8Y/UuR3kK1zoDI/AAAAAAAAADk/fkDZuedlQ_o/s1600/IMG_0181.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-r_UCHn1Sf8Y/UuR3kK1zoDI/AAAAAAAAADk/fkDZuedlQ_o/s1600/IMG_0181.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Architecturally, it was stunning--and much larger than I expected it to be. However, I was disappointed in a sense. Upon entering, we walked past several cutouts for tourists to take photos behind and stalls selling kitschy Buddhist trinkets. A few extremely loud European bros skipped gaily by.<br /><br />"This...is so touristy."<br /><br />"Well, of course it is. <i>We're</i>&nbsp;tourists, too."<br /><br />"I know that, but...I don't know. What about the actual Thais who regard their temples as sacred spaces rather than spectacles for the amusement of foreigners? Do they even bother <i>going</i>&nbsp;to these temples--they charge admission at the door. That <i>can't&nbsp;</i>apply to actual Thais...?"<br /><br />Here we were, having read up on all the proper temple etiquette in advance, all our limbs covered, really concerned about being respectful visitors...in the company of loud whooping-dancing-yelling Eurobros, and girls in tiny tank tops and short shorts. Maybe it was an off-day, but we saw virtually no Thais other than the monks.<br /><br />Question two: How relevant are the temples to modern life in Bangkok? How do the Thais here feel about their temples [indifferent, proud, annoyed]?<br /><br />"Well, I guess we didn't have to worry so much about buying you those pants..." Which was good, because amidst a sea of thousands of clothes vendors, we hadn't found any that were suitable.<br /><br />We decided to wander off into the side streets, and wound up in a quieter part of the city.<br /><br />There were ten squillion cats in the place. I hadn't noticed cats before, and wondered if it was a temple thing [later realizing that, no, there are just thirty trillion stray cats on every block of the city--stray cats wandering into shops and sitting on tables while people are eating, indifferent to them].<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kI_-a6WCViM/UuR4jVcDFeI/AAAAAAAAAD8/swlLY7A7Ldw/s1600/IMG_0161.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kI_-a6WCViM/UuR4jVcDFeI/AAAAAAAAAD8/swlLY7A7Ldw/s1600/IMG_0161.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>I took some photos on the way. A few little girls were dancing to some poppy music. They started giggling and waving at me so I took a picture. A grown man noticed this, and asked me if I wanted to pose for a picture <i>with</i>&nbsp;them and I declined, a bit weirded out [especially since I had no idea what relation, if any, this man had to the little girls]. A few minutes later I passed by them again--the girls had relocated to a more visible area, and there was a hat in front of them that the man had placed there--probably an opportunistic move inspired by my own picture-taking a few moments ago. The girls were about five or six, and a couple of them seemed really enthusiastic about dancing for a crowd, but one stood in the middle a bit awkwardly, clearly dancing because she'd been told to.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_sMzJuRLFfw/UuR3IDDeeII/AAAAAAAAADU/kChV13EavSw/s1600/IMG_0176.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_sMzJuRLFfw/UuR3IDDeeII/AAAAAAAAADU/kChV13EavSw/s1600/IMG_0176.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Not quite sure how to feel about that.<br /><br />Also. I've been getting eaten alive.<br /><br />Before heading out on my trip, I was bombarded with advice on how to prevent mosquitoes, and people kept stressing the importance of doing so. Wear Deet, sleep in a net, <i>wear</i>&nbsp;a net, wear long sleeves, don't go out after dark, burn mosquito coils, etc. Blah, blah, blah.<br /><br />Truth be told, I'm not paranoid about such things back in the states, and I didn't come here in order to become paranoid.<br /><br />Anyway, no one here seems to be getting bitten, and bug spray doesn't seem to be widely sold at the corner marts and so on; I haven't met anyone who bothered with it, nor with a lot of the other bits of advice [like wearing long sleeves and pants]. Granted, in Bangkok, malaria's not really an issue--but in more remote areas I might start to get a little more worried if I'm still getting bitten as often as I am now [oddly, Alex has been bite-free...and usually mosquitoes never bother me]. And there's Dengue everywhere, Bangkok and otherwise.<br /><br />Question three: What do people <i>here</i>&nbsp;[or in rural areas, more so] actually do about mosquitoes?<br /><br />Afterwards, we ran into Jones on our way home, and as we all stood dazedly watching a street vendor make us these strange omelette-crepe-doughy-somethings with condensed milk, he told us about an awesome cheap massage place he'd discovered, and mentioned he'd grabbed a couple business cards, so Alex and I decided to go get worked on. The massage was far better than the one we'd gotten the previous day [and about the same price], but the experience was strange, for several reasons I won't go into...though I found it pretty hilarious when the woman working on me decided to take a phone call during our session, and sat there on the phone for five minutes with her hand on my knee.<br /><br />This involved walking through more protests--a big camp-out in the street, where people were blowing excitedly into whistles as they listened to speeches made by a man on a huge screen. The whole thing seemed really organized, even mellow, and people seemed to be enjoying themselves.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iykt1MdE5-o/UuR2jzyAJAI/AAAAAAAAADM/kR6UnFQvIZI/s1600/IMG_0185.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-iykt1MdE5-o/UuR2jzyAJAI/AAAAAAAAADM/kR6UnFQvIZI/s1600/IMG_0185.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br /><b>Conversation with Terrance</b><br /><br />In the evening we met our host, Terrance, and had a brief conversation. He was a tough character to read, but clearly intelligent and inquisitive. Originally from Florida, he's been living here for about a year and a half, teaching music and other things to kids in the area and working as a route-setter at the nearby climbing gym.<br /><br />I asked him about the protests and he gave me a full spiel on all he'd found out by talking to the local Thais. It was actually really fascinating [and also convinced Alex and I that we might want to get the hell out of Bangkok soon, as cool as it is].<br /><br />Here's a condensed summary, because I found it extremely interesting:<br /><br />Basically, there's this guy, Taksin, who used to be the Prime Minister. He was pretty popular for a while, but is currently in exile on charges of corruption and so on. So his sister was elected in his place [Thailand's first female PM], but everyone knows she's basically a puppet that he's acting through from afar--almost a "remote dictator".<br /><br />Taksin's also been losing more and more favor [since some more rural/conservative people in the North still like him] for other reasons: none of Thailand's rice farmers have been paid in over a year, since he had this idea of hoarding all the country's rice in order to create a global scarcity, and then bring rice back in five years and charge a lot more for it [thinking, mistakenly, that Thailand had a monopoly on the world's rice supply], and now the government is bankrupt and there's just a ton of rice in silos, and a lot of rice farmers who once supported him are on their way to Bangkok to join in the protests.<br /><br />He also created an incentive program where anyone who purchased a car would be given a 100,000 baht rebate [which also expedited the government's bankruptcy]--as if Bangkok didn't have enough cars already--and this has increased pollution in the city. Even the people who went and bought cars feel that the government really should've been focusing on public transportation--the current BTS is so expensive that only rich people, expats, and tourists use it ["Yeah, just so you guys know--if there's two of you, it's pretty much<i>&nbsp;always</i>&nbsp;a lot cheaper to take a cab, unless you get a day pass and are using the train six or more times that day"].<br /><br />The protesters, mainly educated middle-class liberals, are against an upcoming election because they know the election's going to be rigged, and won't really be a democratic process. The election's coming up in February, and people are trying to push it back and stop it from happening.<br /><br />The protests themselves are really peaceful [there are even events coordinators and companies that have been hired out to provide TV screens and sound systems--it's almost like a festival], but recently there've been some third-party terrorist attacks on the protests, the most recent of which killed a street vendor who was just an innocent bystander. The interesting thing is that no one <i>knows</i>&nbsp;who's staging these attacks. Some believe it's the government; some believe it's coming from the protesters themselves in an attempt to garner more public sympathy, and there are other theories as well. In any case, these attacks are suspected to increase as the election approaches.<br /><br />In addition, Taksin has been trying to convince some of his supporters that the king, genuinely liked by people in general, is a bad guy. Taksin supporters have been wearing red ["Because they don't like the king--except 'everyone likes the king', because that's the law..."], whereas supporters of the king have been wearing yellow [the color of the monarchy].<br /><br />"Wait, but I thought it was illegal to say anything against the king." Even stepping on or damaging Thai currency [all of which bears a portrait of the king] is considered extremely offensive and can result in jail time.<br /><br />"It is, but Taksin's rich and powerful enough to get away with it. The crappy thing is that in general the protesters are good people, but their leader is awful. He's just as corrupt; he's buying votes too. A lot of the protesters know this, but they're still for the greater cause and are just glad that there <i>is</i>&nbsp;a leader."<br /><br />"How do I find out more about this? Can I read about it?"<br /><br />"Well...the American media is all pro-Taksin, so they paint a one-sided picture; anything you've seen on CNN is pretty biased. On the other hand, the media in Bangkok, both Thai and English, is all written by the protesters, the educated and wealthier urban Thais, so it's also biased. The people here who are against the protests have a good case as well, but they generally aren't communicating through writing--they'll do heated radio broadcasts, in Thai of course."<br /><br />Our conversation went on to a discussion of tourism in Thailand, and what Alex and I were hoping to do next.<br /><br />"A lot of people think tourism's been destroying Thailand, and that it won't be a viable tourist destination for much longer. We're falling really far behind in terms of public transit--Vietnam's ahead of us, and Malaysia's way ahead. Our transit really just takes tourists in mind, rather than locals. Burma's behind--but the US is investing a ton of money in Burma."<br /><br />"Why?"<br /><br />Alex chipped in merrily, "More poor people to exploit."<br /><br />Terrance added, "Well, think about it. The US put a bunch of factories in China. China's been growing in power, and so they've been moving the factories to Vietnam. Now Vietnam's coming up, and so <i>they're</i>&nbsp;going to stick the factories in Burma."<br /><br />"Ew. But that makes sense."<br /><br />"Well, a lot of things make sense <i>monetarily</i>, at least."<br /><br />"It seems like a lot of the islands are being overtaken as well. People have been recommending islands for us to go visit, and they'll say things like, 'This island is like what Ko Samui used to be before it got overrun by tourist resorts and got all crowded and polluted--go visit it now, while it's still pristine, because it won't last.' There's this transference of the 'remote island experience' as each one gets over-developed in turn, like they're all catching some contagious disease."<br /><br />Alex said, "I really want to head down south and see some of the islands, though I guess they're pretty touristy."<br /><br />"Alex. <i>We're</i>&nbsp;tourists, too. Even if we try and pretend we're not--you've said that yourself."<br /><br />"I know, but there are different kinds of tourists."<br /><br />Terrance said, "Well, think of it this way. You can go down south to <i>look</i>&nbsp;at all the tourists, like going to the zoo; or you can go north and <i>be</i>&nbsp;a tourist. The sort of tourists you'll meet up north are probably all going to be backpackers."<br /><br />Alex laughed, "Like the zoo...sort of 'meta-tourism'."<br /><br />I asked him about the Full Moon Parties on Ko Pha Ngan, which we'd been hearing a lot of mention of. "They sound like beach raves. And they happen every month?"<br /><br />"Yeah, pretty much. DJs and drugs. And they happen virtually every night, now--there are Half Moon Parties, Quarter Moon Parties, Three Quarter Moon Parties..."<br /><br />"So what were they, originally?" I'd assumed there was some rich cultural background behind them, and that their current incarnation was just the result of them being modernized.<br /><br />"Uh, no...they're basically just big parties where tourists can go do drugs without worrying as much about getting in trouble as they would elsewhere in the country." In Thailand, drug punishments are severe--in general, for many Southeast Asian countries the penalty for possession of certain quantities is mandatory execution, and even being found with drugs in your system [even if you can prove you consumed the drugs outside the country's borders] can land you in jail for a long, long time.<br /><br />He added, "It's not really my thing. And it's not so much the party atmosphere that alienates me--it's that everyone there seems completely disinterested in the place they're in. There are parts of Bangkok where a lot of the people are just there to get wasted, but it has nothing to do with <i>being in Thailand.</i>&nbsp;They're doing the same stuff they'd be doing in Vegas. There's just a disconnect."<br /><br />"I hear you. All that being said...we're probably going to go check it out."<br /><br />"Well, of course. If only to say you did it. It's just one of those things."<br /><br /><b>The Tourist Drag</b><br /><br />Alex and I have been having a lot of conversations we weren't expecting to have--about what it means to be a tourist, and whether we can really differentiate ourselves from the caricatures of "dumb, entitled, fat Western invaders," or not. Perhaps we couldn't, despite efforts to be conscientious, to support small businesses, to respect cultural norms, to learn the language.<br /><br />On New Years Eve in a Capitola beach house, our friend Hana had told us [and I'm paraphrasing pretty hard because I was extremely intoxicated at the time], "When I went to Southeast Asia the hardest thing to come to terms with was that I was really just another one of the millions of white backpackers--and there was no way to really separate from them. A lot of them were all trying to separate and count themselves as different, but we were all there as visitors, we weren't really ever going to assimilate to the culture, we were there on different pretenses to begin with--because we're privileged first-worlders who can afford to go travel for fun with our nice backpacks that the locals could never afford."<br /><br />Those words have been on my mind quite a bit, and I keep going back and forth with what's possible, what we should and shouldn't care about. Is it just delusional to think we need to differentiate ourselves from the other tourists who are propagating cultural degeneration? Is it inevitable that we're contributing to it, too? Or do we have a responsibility, as tourists, to be conscientious of things other tourists ignore? Is&nbsp;there any way to tap in and&nbsp;<i>really</i> be participants, rather than spectators? Or is it self-righteous and ignorant to even try?<br /><br />In any case, for the next two days we decided to bite the bullet and embrace our tourist-ness.<br /><br />We went with Jones to Ko San Road [which we'd originally been keen to avoid because we figured it'd be "full of tourists"], to meet up with some of his native Thai friends. It was a lot of fun--it actually reminded me a lot of the French Quarter in New Orleans [particularly Bourbon Street].<br /><br />We started off with a bucket of rum and coke that had three straws in it so we could suck it down family-style [though I was pretty sure there was not really any rum in it]. A guy was playing the guitar and singing covers [Jack Johnson, the Eagles, standard American fare] who was fantastic; at first we thought he was lip-syncing until we were able to pick out his accent. Vendors came by our table, pointing lasers at us, playing wooden frogs, trying silently to entice us into buying trinkets. Eventually we caved when a lady bearing scorpions came by. None of us were genuinely interested in scorpions ourselves so much as we were trying to convince each other to eat them. Of course, being a bit tipsy already, this led to us each buying one. Pretty sure that's how it always happens.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1/1622677_10203016479234390_305220943_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/t1/1622677_10203016479234390_305220943_n.jpg" width="240" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>They weren't as gross as I thought they'd be. Kind of like crunchy dirt. Later when we met up with Ning and Toffee, who are actually from Thailand, they informed me that the silkworms were better [I tried some, and they were--sort of like french fries].<br /><br />We all got a tower of Chang beer--holy shit those things are <i>huge</i>, and so cheap--the girls laughed at how surprised I was; I suppose that's a standard newcomer reaction. Nearby, a troupe of seven-year old boys were breakdancing before an enthusiastic cell-phone-camera-equipped crowd ["I can't even tell if those kids are good or not, but they sure have enthusiasm"].<br /><br />Ning mentioned she'd be heading to Chiang Mai on Sunday--Alex and I had been trying to work out the logistics of how best to get there--and offered to pick up tickets for us so we could all go. Perfect.<br /><br />Afterwards we headed to a wine bar in Nana [the area Alex and I had spent our first couple nights in--decidedly way more obnoxious than Ko San], and I bought an elderflower cocktail that cost more than I'd spent on food in the last two days. We wandered around the ritzy street, past several bar vans, and witnessed two six-year-old girls running by and stealing an absent-minded <i>farang</i>'s drinks he'd left on a table, chugging them as they sprinted away. The guy, clearly a scrooge, did not find this hilarious. On a whim, we waited in line to get into a fancy night club that presumably didn't have a cover, in a long line of people who looked like they'd been plucked straight out of L.A., and the guy at the door berated Alex for his cut-off pants and wouldn't let us in ["Sir, we have a strict dress code here...no shorts, especially not shorts that are <i>torn</i>&nbsp;like&nbsp;<i>rags!"</i>&nbsp;Don't get a hernia, bro]. Ha.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/p480x480/1607089_462649360501228_1985584530_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-e-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/p480x480/1607089_462649360501228_1985584530_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />The next day we headed to JJ [Chatuchak weekend market] with Jones and April, an awesome Chinese girl who'd settled on Bangkok after extensive traveling and was working as a freelance Mandarin teacher. [Back at Terrance's place, we met another Chinese girl with near-perfect English named Papaya who had traveled extensively and worked as a translator.] I'd wandered away from the group to find ice cream while they were waiting on some paella from a large dancing chef, and had gotten completely lost on my way back to find them. The place is huge and completely disorienting--I don't think any description would do it justice. Permanent shopfronts like stores at the mall, but sliced in half, opened onto dense hallways bursting with goods for sale like at the Platinum Fashion Mall, only this place had everything. We walked through aisles of puppies ["They're so cute, it hurts...but this all seems kind of suspicious; they're <i>only</i>&nbsp;selling puppies...what happens when no one buys them?"] and then wound up in what we called the "incense section", and continues roaming for a few hours. I bought a tiny sewing machine [that I'd originally mistaken for a small stapler] for 60 baht [under $2].<br /><br />Afterwards, we headed to the nearby park and took turns playing Jones' guitar by the pond. A little later, the national anthem came on [which I hadn't witnessed yet]. Everyone in the park stood up and froze. We followed suit, and I tried not to laugh as I looked across the pond at a hundred statues. Ah, nationalism.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ANb2uw9JlEQ/UuR4xGB2DFI/AAAAAAAAAEE/jfoBDkBfCis/s1600/IMG_0187.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ANb2uw9JlEQ/UuR4xGB2DFI/AAAAAAAAAEE/jfoBDkBfCis/s1600/IMG_0187.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Last night, Terrance sent us out to a tucked-away local restaurant that we never would've found on our own--he'd told us in advance what to order [and had written down the names in Thai so that there'd be no confusion]. It was incredible, and the first legitimately spicy meal we've had here [we've since been told that Bangkok food really isn't all that spicy and that we'll have to head north to get our asses blasted off].<br /><br />So, today is our last day in Bangkok. Heading to Chiang Mai on the 10p.m. bus. A photographer from Israel was going to hire me for a shoot in Bangkok if we could stay another week or so--but even though this place has caught us under its spell and there's definitely much more we could see and do here, we just want to move on. We've gotten comfortable here and would rather get out prematurely, and look forward to coming back in the future, than overstay our enthusiasm.<br /><br />Besides, it's hard to practice our Thai in a place where most everyone understands some English.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mE6HQpxeQyY/UuR31F0uFdI/AAAAAAAAADs/eUB3lM61L4Q/s1600/IMG_0166.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mE6HQpxeQyY/UuR31F0uFdI/AAAAAAAAADs/eUB3lM61L4Q/s1600/IMG_0166.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br /><b>Random closing thoughts</b><br /><br />Newest addiction: chrysanthemum drinks. Holy shit.<br /><br />Way too much plastic everywhere. If we buy a bottle of water from 7-eleven [which we often have to do since the tap water isn't potable], they try and send us away with a bag and a straw.<br /><br />The only people I've seen wearing stereotypical "Thai clothes"--the long flowing skirts and genie pants and embroidered sandals--are foreign white tourists [myself included]. Everyone who lives in Bangkok, on the other hand, dresses in the same jeans and button-downs and sweaters you'd see in New York or wherever else. Ha. I suppose this might change once I get out of the city?<br /><br />Beer on ice really isn't bad, as blasphemous as that may sound.<br /><br />Stray dogs here seem a lot smarter than American dogs. They look both ways before crossing the street and compose themselves with a quiet vigilance, never chasing after shit or barking. I always thought dogs were kind of dopey and stupid [in the best way], but maybe they're just coddled into incompetency, like people can be. Nature vs. nurture.<br /><br />Oh, fun fact: Bangkok has the longest name of any city [for those who didn't know]. It more-or-less translates to: "The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city [unlike Ayutthaya] of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn". Also, Bangkok is only "Bangkok" to English-speakers. The Thai name for it sounds more like <i>grung tep.</i><br /><i><br /></i><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7ATRFaxDNB4/UuR4HGB1HNI/AAAAAAAAAD0/AXPVa57Z4-s/s1600/IMG_0162.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7ATRFaxDNB4/UuR4HGB1HNI/AAAAAAAAAD0/AXPVa57Z4-s/s1600/IMG_0162.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', Tahoma, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"></span>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-34837310301143578612014-01-22T20:45:00.001-08:002014-01-25T19:36:15.571-08:00Confronting my Naivete [First day in Bangkok]<b>Bangkok, Thailand</b><br /><br />Life is full--yesterday morning felt like five days ago. I've learned a lot so far. Mainly, that I'm far less worldly than I thought, but also far more resourceful. <br /><br /><b>Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport</b><br /><br />So, I know the airport in Taipei probably doesn't seem like the first thing I should start extolling the virtues of, but I'm going to anyway [revealing straightaway my conspicuous lack of worldliness].<br /><br />We had a layover there and I almost sad to leave. That airport is a veritable fucking theme park; I was laughing my entire time there. When we showed up to our gate, it was decorated with Chinese brush painting on the walls, overhanging lamps masquerading as paper lanterns, am expensive-looking fake frog pond made of glass. The gate had a name, even. Underneath the facade of a traditional wooden roof a sign read, "Taiwan Image." I thought this was cute.<br /><br />Then I wandered down the corridor. Next door was the gate "Postal Waiting Room", guarded by a fat penguin-looking postal worker that reeked <i>Sanrio, </i>a flock of airmail-envelope-paper-planes taking flight over wavy upholstered blue benches. Another was book themed, stocked with several shelves of free books. Another was Hello Kitty themed, complete with a playplace and rainbow amphitheater. Another looked like a room in a museum, full of Taiwanese ceremonial artifacts sitting pretty behind glass and plaques.<br /><br />Amidst the shops were eerie fake living room displays: a mantle, lamp, mid-game pool table, upholstered furniture, and picture-framed screen looping the same commercial over and over promoted Glenlivet in a display of charming overkill. Random aesthetic sanctuaries dotted the corridor: a room full of flower arrangements in which one could unwind from any in-transit anxiety. Amidst the icons for "Restroom" and "Smoking lounge" was a kneeling figure, which directed one to the prayer room. All the airport staff looked like dolls that had just come out of their shrink wrap--many were in silly costumes [especially those working near the Hello Kitty gate], standing as still as members of the Queen's Guard, and their hair and makeup was done up to a degree of perfection I rarely see in the states [on the men, as well as the women].<br /><br />The "Green Relaxing Room" cracked me up the most--in it were several life-sized dioramas of the jungle or beach, complete with backdrops, fake rocks and trees, and sand. I forced Alex to indulge me in taking fake tourist photos in front of these, much to the amusement of other foreigners passing by.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yGmozFGcGj0/UuR-PlmkzjI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/1dMdz-zpA90/s1600/IMG_0146.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yGmozFGcGj0/UuR-PlmkzjI/AAAAAAAAAEQ/1dMdz-zpA90/s1600/IMG_0146.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O0WevcCFP28/UuR-0Ab7zAI/AAAAAAAAAEY/kGGKzkOKEMk/s1600/IMG_0139.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-O0WevcCFP28/UuR-0Ab7zAI/AAAAAAAAAEY/kGGKzkOKEMk/s1600/IMG_0139.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br /><b>Relativity</b> <br /><br />Upon our 3:00a.m. arrival, everything we'd been told to expect was acted out for us in real-time, which made me feel like we were navigating through a video game after reading how to beat it. I'd been given instructions on exactly what to do, which was lucky because I was far too tired to think for myself. <br /><br />Customs was so quick and easy that we didn't realize we'd already passed through it.<br /><br />Immediately, "discount" taxi drivers tried to chivvy us into their cars--I'd been told this would happen, and that I should ignore them. We headed down to the lower level and got a cab. The driver asked to see my taxi receipt, which in addition to the location information is also the only way I can keep track of the driver and send in a complaint if he tries to rip us off, and tried to pocket it--as I'd been told he might. As soon as we were in the car, he tried to haggle a fixed fare with me--I'd been told not to oblige, no matter how good the offer sounded [he started at 500 baht for a 37 km ride--about $15 for 23 miles].<br /><br />"No. Meter, please." After a bit of insisting that a flat fare would actually be cheaper for me, he reluctantly turned on the meter. Once we arrived, the cab fare--<i>after</i> the airport tax and two tolls--was about $9.<br /><br />Andrew, a photographer I'd worked with back in Reno had comped us a hotel for our first two nights in Bangkok, since we were planning to shoot in Pattaya. When we stumbled into the lobby, it took me several minutes to realize that he was standing right there next to the concierge, and had been waiting.<br /><br />"About time you got here!"<br /><br />"Yeah...what is it, 4 a.m.? My brain's pretty fried. So when are you heading to Pattaya?"<br /><br />"Well. I'm leaving town today."<br /><br />"Today? Change of plans? I thought you'd be here until at least the 22nd."<br /><br />"Today is the 22nd."<br /><br />I laughed deliriously at this, but his face didn't change.<br /><br />"...Wait, what?"<br /><br />"I booked your room from the 20th-22nd, since you said your flight got in early morning of the 21st. That was yesterday."<br /><br />"...Wait." My jet lag-addled brain exploded. "...Fuck...ah. Fuck...? Shit. Wait..."<br /><br />Lesson one: Don't blindly trust the flight itinerary at the expense of common sense. [Or, more generally, double-check things.] Apparently...just because the arrival's <i>time</i> has been adjusted, doesn't mean the date has.<br /><br /><b>Citichic </b><br /><br />Luckily for us, Andrew was extremely generous [despite his obvious and completely justified annoyance] and had already bought us an extra night. He showed us to our room--it was exceedingly trendy. All the fixtures and furniture seemed to scream, "Look how excessively fucking modern we are!" There were two different showerheads, and a sliding pervert-door in case someone in the bedroom wanted to look into the bathroom. We had robes and our own backyard patio, canopied in tropical trees I'd never seen before, with fruits that looked like strings of anal beads.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-omTJ73I6Q9Q/UuR_Xessd_I/AAAAAAAAAEg/iS2F4sFtlnY/s1600/IMG_0148.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-omTJ73I6Q9Q/UuR_Xessd_I/AAAAAAAAAEg/iS2F4sFtlnY/s1600/IMG_0148.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />My guilt was overshadowed only by my exhaustion. Andrew told us to get an hour or two of sleep and to meet him for breakfast at the Radisson at 6:30--and that I shouldn't be too overwrought with guilt, because the room [which would easily be several hundred dollars a night in America] was about $40/night.<br /><br />We did, and when I mentioned making it up to him and heading to Pattaya, he seemed undecided and gave no clear answers. However, he was quite cheerful, and told us all about the most recent local scams and political unrest, and what tourist traps to avoid. As we left, he told us to have a good time and vaguely inferred that I should keep abreast-ish of my emails.<br /><br />Incidentally, I'm writing all of this from one of the computers at CitiChic; it's a gorgeous morning and we're about to check out and head to a Couchsurfing host's place and I don't know when I'll next have a keyboard at my disposal. Alex is running around, making sure we have potable water and looking into taking a water taxi.<br /><br /><b>First-Day Acclimation</b><br /><br />In the morning we opted to run around, rather than crash out and exacerbate our jet lag. Arbitrarily we chose Lomphini Park as a more-or-less destination, since it'd give us a direction to go in, which can be a tough thing to settle on when there's really nowhere at all one needs to be.<br /><br />No American city I've been to is as densely overstimulating as Bangkok--so full of color and noise and fast-moving activity. On the streets were countless vendors constantly either selling food or getting ready for the next rush; motorcycle taxis zipped around with well-to-do clients sitting sidesaddle behind them. Several times, I nearly stepped on someone or crossed a busy street without realizing. New York might as well be a desolate expanse. Las Vegas, Oakland, San Francisco, New Orleans--all quiet and sparse. <br /><br />The instant we set out the door, the cacophonous bustle grabbed us in a chokehold: stampedes of motorcyclists cutting corners as if they were already shitfaced at 9a.m.; cars driving all over the wrong lanes and crooked sidewalks; a stray dog sleeping in a bed of tied-off trash bags; a horde of about twelve rats clearly having a momentous shindig behind a vacant food stall; massive clumps of telephone wires sagging overhead, tied together spaghetti-esque with no seeming rhyme or reason. From these clumps of wires I heard a loud buzzing: the sound of something arcing.<br /><br />"That's not really a sound we're supposed to hear," Alex said mildly. Nonetheless, the buzzing exerted its recurring presence in our day, which we found amusing. Granted, we were in a bit of a stupor and found everything amusing; for several minutes we stood and anthropomorphized a group of pigeons, dubbing over their pigeon-talk. We walked by several construction workers in bandana-balaclavas who were using metal grinders and saws right in the middle of the sidewalk, which inspired us to make a string of OSHA jokes that wouldn't have been funny to anyone else.<br /><br />Lesson two: In Bangkok, the first phrase one should learn isn't "Hello," "Thank you," "You're welcome," <br />"Discount?" or "No problem," all of which I'd gone ahead and committed to memory. <br /><br />In fact, it's "No, thank you," the one no-brainer phrase that hadn't occurred to me to learn.<br /><br />Within five minutes, we'd been approached by every type of would-be scanner that we'd been warned about: congenial and well-dressed men pretending to recognize us from somewhere, women with clipboards trying to get us in on a contest, taxi and tuk-tuk drivers trying to coax us into their vehicles, calling after us in ceaseless succession that we looked lost and that they could help us.<br /><br />Again, it felt like a video game: they all fit their character roles so perfectly, and my responses were such to-the-letter reenactments of advice I'd been given. Sensory overload notwithstanding, it was pretty fun, and while my perma-smile was borne of insomniac delirium and cultural pressure [in Thailand one's expected to smile, even--and especially--during less comfortable interactions], it was sincere.<br /><br />Third lesson: learning the Thai alphabet [or printing it out and carrying it around] would've been a lot more helpful than learning basic phrases and numbers, since Thai people all know how to say those things in English, anyway. But several street and station signs aren't spelled out in English--it's tough to know how to ask for directions when you don't even know where it is you're trying to get to [and Google maps gave us all street names in the Thai alphabet].<br /><br />Still, after not too long, I'd figured out how to read some of the Thai signs by context, and we made it to Skytrain, which was extremely navigable and thankfully devoid of tourist-predating scammers and taxi drivers.<br /><br /><b>Street Food</b><br /><br />Once off BTS, we wandered down a main road and were pulled into several detours by our noses over the next couple hours. Down extremely narrow alleys would be large markets full of street vendors that were completely hidden from the main roads.<br /><br />The marketplaces were bustling, sometimes with seemingly hundreds of people, yet we were the <i>only </i>non-locals at any of them. We took this as a good sign. Several of the stalls had pre-established local prices and we'd watch what they charged the locals; no one tried to overcharge or up-sell us. In fact, for the first time since we'd been outdoors in Bangkok, the locals treated us with courteous indifference; no one batted an eye or tried to coax us into buying anything. <br /><br />I grew up on traditional Asian food a la my mother and grandma, and been to several Thai restaurants in America--but the majority of food being sold on the street was completely new to us. We couldn't even discern most of the ingredients.<br /><br />Case in point: the first thing we ate. I can best describe it as "deep-fried seaweed-and-or-shallot jello cubes" that we supposed might have been derived from beans. Or dough. Or something else.<br /><br />Throughout the day, we also ate some sweet taro-blob-fried-corn things; a rice dish with egg yolks, peanuts, mushrooms, taro paste, and some yellow legume-like things; sweet-and-savory corn-taro-and-maybe-some-type-of-squash blobs; lotus root juice [YES]; spicy fish balls; some amazing "milk pudding" with kidney beans, pudding jelly, and some firm jelloid cubes with one of the most interesting textures of anything I've eaten; an ice cream slushie thing with coconut milk, peanuts, rice, and some gooey white things that I thought at first might have been some kind of fruit, but weren't; squid kebabs; <i>real</i> pad thai [which I didn't even recognize as pad thai at first]...<br /><br />Summarily, we ate a lot. With everything costing between 10-40 baht [$0.30-1.20], another street stall every two feet, and an incentive to support smaller businesses off the main tourist drag, the only limiting factor was the capacities of our stomachs.<br /><br />Also, fun fact: Red Bull originally came from Thailand [with a similar logo]. However, the Thai version is sort of syrupy [less fruity], uncarbonated, and even <i>more</i> caffeinated.<br /><br />Of course, we got one of those [for about $0.20]. <br /><br /><b>Lumphini Park</b><br /><br />Eventually we reached Lumphini. It wasn't what I expected--full of streams and bridges and grass and a smattering of pretty old traditional buildings and monuments, but with roads still cutting through it every now and again as a constant reminder that, yes, we're still in the city. I sort of liked this frenetic aspect, personally--it felt more juxtaposed to be hanging out by a pretty pond while, right over yonder, chaos was still ensuing without me. Several people in casual business attire were taking naps under trees and in the grass.<br /><br />Throughout the day, we opted not to take photos ["What would we photograph? I could take a picture of just about <i>anything</i> we've seen today; I'd rather just live it than attempt to capture it all."] but I caved when I saw a <i>huge </i>monitor lizard eating some large crow-or-other-corvid like it was a large insect [unfortunately, none of these turned out--I couldn't get close enough].<br /><br />Alex, having seen several monitor lizards himself in Australia, laughed at me. "Those things are everywhere--they're like squirrels." Squirrels, except the size of dogs and with necrosis-inducing venom. Over the next hour, we probably saw over ten of them--and minus one small boy who was throwing a stick at one, the locals seemed indifferent to their presence.<br /><br />Still, even he was impressed when we saw one about six feet long that appeared to be morbidly obese. We guessed it probably weighed about ninety pounds at the very least.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-doDQH25R084/UuR_s2u24ZI/AAAAAAAAAEo/T9c7t_8jgVA/s1600/IMG_0158.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-doDQH25R084/UuR_s2u24ZI/AAAAAAAAAEo/T9c7t_8jgVA/s1600/IMG_0158.JPG" height="213" width="320" /></a></div><br />Along with the lizards, we saw several bird species and plants we'd never seen before. Several beautiful stray dogs ran around ["Well, when they're surviving on their own, the useless traits get weeded out pretty quick--you're not going to see stray pugs, or purebreds at all, really."] and the ponds were full of nearly human-sized catfish that were mostly hidden under the murky surface. I coined several dumb new portmanteaus [dalmigeon, bushlephants, hearchways...].<br /><br />We also came across several protester campgrounds--tent villages blasting heated speeches in Thai. I resisted the urge to go ask them questions.<br /><br />At one point, I thought I saw a long blue-gray tongue flicker out of one of the holes in a manhole cover. Alex laughed at me and said I was being ridiculous.<br /><br />Five minutes later, we saw a giant monitor lizard--maybe a five-footer--squeeze clumsily out of a crack in the street that looked like it was about two inches wide. <i>[So there!]</i><br /><br /><i>Ack, it's almost check-out time, so I'll skip a few things and wrap this up. </i><br /><br /><b>Platinum Fashion Mall</b><br /><br />When giving us recommendations, Andrew had insisted that we visit the Platinum Fashion Mall. Neither of us are much for shopping--or clothes, period--but he insisted.<br /><br />That mall was easily one of the most surreal [and claustraphobia-inducing] places I'd been in my life--an endless labyrinth with aisles four feet wide, with walls made up of tiny shopfronts. We took an escalator from the street to get inside its fifth floor, and then got lost several times, I finally reached a directory and discovered that there were four floors of <i>just</i> women's clothing. It seemed impossible. The place was so big and dizzying--and had so much of <i>every</i> conceivable garment in the Universe--that I figured it'd be completely impossible to ever actually find any particular item you might go looking for. A good percentage of the patrons were dolled-up ladyboys, another sizeable portion were foreigners. Also, shit was <i>cheap</i>--having packed virtually no clothes for my trip [just the T-shirt and pants I'd worn on the plane], I bought a couple things, all priced between $1-6 after haggling [and $6 was for items arguably crossing into "high-end" territory].<br /><br />It felt like a really weird dream, and I'd highly recommend it to anyone who doesn't become exceedingly anxious in small crowded spaces.<br /><br /><b>Southern Style Thai Massage</b><br /><br />So, I'm trained in Thai massage myself, having completed programs in both Northern Style and Nerve Touch Style in the states.<br /><br />I'd asked my instructor about Southern Style, and she'd said, "It's similar to Northern Style, but a lot faster and harder and more aggressive--but not necessarily beneficial or therapeutic, like Nerve Touch. Pretty much any time you hear someone had a scary experience getting Thai massage, or an injury, it was a Southern Style massage."<br /><br />"So...you're saying Southern Style is basically a shitty version of the same thing, rather than a style on its own?"<br /><br />"Well, I suppose so."<br /><br />I thought she was just biased. So we got massages in Bangkok.<br /><br />I enjoyed it--it's tough for me to <i>not</i> enjoy a massage--but it was still easily the worst Thai massage I'd ever gotten. The therapist's sense of safe alignment was egregious, and a few times I was scared she was legitimately going to mis-align my back or tweak my knees.<br /><br />Still...an hour-long massage for $5?...I really can't complain. However, I'll probably wait until we head up closer to Chiang Mai before trying another one. <br /><br /><b>Checking out</b><br /><br />Phew. I woke up this morning [first legitimate night of sleep in days]. Wanted to clear my head this morning by writing all this shit down while I've got a free computer at my disposal. Also, I'm nostalgic, but forget everything if I don't eke out enough discipline to transcribe it.<br /><br />There was a lot of other cool stuff that I don't have time to go into--on our walk back to the hotel, in addition to the night markets, we passed by several old VW hippie vans along the street that had been converted to portable bars, with built-in counters and sidewalk bar stools, pimped out with squillions of lasers and blinky Christmas lights and blasting electronic music. They looked like something out of Burning Man.<br /><br />But it's time to get off my ass and go--we're going to stay with an American ex-pat we found via Couchsurfing.<br /><br />Next after that...Alex wants to head south to the islands and then Malaysia, and I want to go north and on to Indochina. So we're going to flip a coin.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-62377520974436711632014-01-20T03:01:00.000-08:002014-01-20T03:18:46.263-08:00Channeling My Inner ChickenshitFor weeks now I've repeated, like a broken record, the same phrase to whomever's asked me how I'm doing: "About to fly to Bangkok with a one-way ticket." Each time, the words emerged automatically; meanwhile, I was catatonic, not registering the words that were fast becoming my own personal fucking catchphrase.<br /><br />Really, that's not an answer to the question&nbsp;<i>How are you doing?</i>&nbsp;but everyone I've said it to has accepted it as such.<br /><br />This is the last time I'm stating it, but this time I'm at least half-conscious of my words: I'm flying to Bangkok in a little over twelve hours...and that's basically the extent of my itinerary thus far.<br /><br />As my departure's been arriving, a lot of people I've caught up with or run into--mainly acquaintances or bygone friends from a past life I no longer relate to--keep saying things to me like, "I wish I could just get up and go like you, by the seat of your pants, caution to the wind, [insert cliche after cliche here]--you're so fearless/free-spirited/bohemian." Or whatever.<br /><br />They couldn't be farther from the truth.<br /><br />I'd like to officially come out: By default, I'm actually pretty fucking neurotic. I overthink, overanalyze, overspeculate on worst-case scenarios. My natural tendency is to swing between being a control freak, and being opportunistically lazy. I am aeons away from being inherently free from fear and anxiety.<br /><br />A very select few close friends of mine know this all too well; on the other hand, my acquaintances tend to invent a persona for me that I generally haven't bothered to disillusion them from because--I'll admit--the persona is pretty flattering. However, it's a fucking facade, and after a long-ass while of being adulated [and even iconized] on false pretenses got me feeling pretty worn-down. It's that whole <i>it's worse to be loved for what you're not than hated for what you are</i>&nbsp;platitude-majigg, incarnate. This incongruence was a large factor behind my compulsively deactivating my Facebook a while ago [which I've just now reactivated, after the persuasive barrages of a couple friends--given that I'm traveling without a phone, and with a camera].<br /><br />Now, presenting the reason I'm writing all of this:<br /><br />By birth, I'm chickenshit. That's not meant to be self-deprecating; rather, the thing I've just realized is that&nbsp;<i>that's kind of the whole fucking&nbsp;point.</i><br /><br />Listen. On my first solo road trip, I scraped together $900 and left my credit/debit cards behind. I packed my car with a sleeping bag, climbing shoes, and a couple cans of soup left over from my winter supply. That was to last me through three months of driving a vague loop from Tahoe down to San Diego, up to Vancouver, then back down to Tahoe.<br /><br />It should be obvious to anyone with the faintest grasp of American gas prices, cost of living, and geography that $900 was not even remotely in the vicinity of being almost enough for such a trip. I had no jobs lined up, and no firm plans of where I'd stay along the way.<br /><br /><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Call it poor planning, but I did that on purpose. It forced me to have a better time than I ever could have had if I'd taken the precautions of responsible planning and budgeting, if I'd been able to buffer myself in creature comforts, if I'd been able to maintain all the same habits.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Why? Because doing so was the only way to finally quell the unfounded fear, anxiety, and paranoia that had been plaguing me all winter.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">To use an excerpt from an email I wrote an old friend the other night, featuring the exact moment this realization of my own behavior and motivations suddenly hit me:</span><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">---</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>My winter's similarly been a succession of catalyzing shaker-uppers. Lots of out-of-nowhere encounters [with people, but also other things--books, experiences, coincidences] that have propelled me to be introspective in a productive way, rather than "introspective" in that punishing, paralyzing, depressed way...which I don't think is true introspection to begin with. I think true introspection might lead you down dark passageways, but eventually comes full circle back out into the light--a brighter, cleaner light than whatever you'd been basking in before.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Blah, blah, figurative language. Metaphors and shit.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Anyway, you're welcome? Not really, though--I mean, not that you're not welcome, but it was a symbiotic exchange. I've been learning about myself from all my interactions this winter, too--in gauging how I react to different questions or situations, in gauging what feelings emerge or linger when I'm alone again after the interaction is over. It's interesting. I've dug up a lot of old ghosts from the past [ranging from casual acquaintances...to closet-skeletons].</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>This winter's been existential boot camp for me. Asking myself a lot of unhealthy questions, dealing with unwarranted anxiety and depression. [Granted, who's to say when those things are and are not warranted? Are they ever warranted? Are they ever not? What does anything mean? AHHHH!]&nbsp;</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Then I climbed out. The boy went away, so that I'd be left alone to make sure I was standing on two feet and empowering myself [rather than turning to the comforts of a partner to use as a crutch and distract me from myself--knowing him makes me wiser]. I pulled out my fucking IUD, which had never even occurred to me as a culprit. I started tackling one important task at a time, instead of overwhelming myself with several and being reduced to arresting procrastination. I went outside. I woke up earlier. Then I started meeting up with people I hadn't seen in a long, long time--and seeing myself reflected in ways that I denied at first, resentful ["they're just projecting some idealized archetype onto me, rather than simply seeing me"], and then later accepted as facets of truth. Just because a perspective is dissimilar--and incomplete--doesn't mean it's ALL wrong. I mean, it's limited, embellished, but so is everything--we limit things so they'll be simple, and embellish them so they'll be memorable. And even if the projection seems too lofty, the answer isn't resentment--or big-headedness--it's comparative self-evaluation to the other person's projection of me...and then converting it into a challenge, or an inspiration.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Anyway, that's what my own internal process for this winter looks like. Letting go of arbitrary fear.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>In all honesty: as much practice I've had in chasing uncertainty [and I've had a lot of fucking practice in the last few years], it still scares the steaming shit out of me every time I walk up to the precipice.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>However, I know from experience that--once I jump--the fear becomes obsolete, and all that's left is adrenaline and a sense of infinity.&nbsp;</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>[This is literal, too: One of my best ways of getting myself out of a depressive funk is to go jump into a cold body of water--ideally an ocean, lake, or river, at night, in winter. And when I get out of the water, I feel so alive and not at all cold. The initial apprehension is there every single time, and never even really diminishes--but as I keep logging mileage this same pointless thing countless times, I become more and more assured of how I'm going to feel, once I get it over with, by a deeper knowledge that beats off my instincts to back down. It's my own version of practicing/cultivating something like faith.]</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>So, a month ago I worried about mosquito prevention, worst-case scenarios, theft, issues at the border, being targeted by the police, running out of money...I even thought about all the things I could put my money towards, or all the work I could get, or things I could do, if only I chose to cancel the trip and stay in the States.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>The closer it gets--the more of an inevitability it becomes--the more relaxed I feel. I get this sort of zen-like resignation. I'm packing next to nothing, and I know once I get through airport security, I'm going to feel like I've finally returned home. That warm narcotic-orgasmic-bracing relief of tension I didn't even know I'd been carrying.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>It never, ever feels like that's going to happen before the fact, but I know from experience to have faith because that's&nbsp;always&nbsp;what happens.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Incidentally, this is why I only buy non-refundable plane tickets: because I know myself well enough to know that, if I allow myself an easy way out, I'll end up taking it. I have to trick myself, all the time--not only with traveling, but with more mundane things [like studying, exercising, working, errands, hygiene--anything requiring discipline, which is something I decidedly do&nbsp;not&nbsp;have a natural-occuring supply of.</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Tricks...I have to leave myself no easy way out, or make things into a game, or make it so that I'd have someone to answer to&nbsp;should&nbsp;I back out--where I'd lose face or let someone down by doing so.&nbsp;</i></span></div><div style="color: #232323; min-height: 16px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div style="color: #232323;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>Some people seem to be easily self-motivated, or truly fearless. Lately people keep making the mistake of thinking I'm one of those people. Not even close. In truth, I am as lazy and cowardly as the next person. I just don't let my laziness and cowardice get the best of me--I corner myself until I have no choice but to act constructively.</i></span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br />---<br /><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Tonight, I sat on the roof of my old house with Alex. We were silent for a while.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"I'm nervous."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"<i>I'm</i>&nbsp;nervous."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"That's why we're <i>going</i>, though."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Exactly."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">It's not just about questing for adventure because it's fun [though that's obviously a big part of it]. If I was&nbsp;<i>actually</i>&nbsp;fearless, and living exactly the way that I do, it'd be gratuitous. I'd just be wanking my ego, over and over, resulting in weak thrills, at best. There'd be no rush, no challenge, and most importantly, no growth.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">I have no use for a stagnant life--even if that life appears on the outside to be rife with extreme sports and strange encounters. Nothing disturbs me more than meeting someone with a life that appears full and rich and surreal, only to find that they've become desensitized and adopt a too-cool-for-school attitude towards everything in the entire world--that is, towards their own existence. It disgusts me, even. They do all this cool shit, meet all these people, but have nothing to live for: philosophical zombies in glamorous packaging.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">A couple days ago a girl asked me, "Why Thailand?"</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Well, not just Thailand. Not sure where else I might be going from there."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Yeah, but why <i>Thailand</i>, in particular? As your first stop."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"Because it was cheaper than New Zealand, and more of a departure from what I know."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"That doesn't answer my question, though."</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">"...Doesn't it?"</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Thailand's got nothing to do with this trip, really.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">The&nbsp;<i>ultimate</i>&nbsp;reason I'm going is unknown to me, of course: if I already knew my reason for going on this trip, then I wouldn't need to bother going.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div><div><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">More generally, the reason I do what I do is because I'm not a philosophical zombie yet, and this trip is just one of succession self-vaccinations against becoming one.</span></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-70904105413847282452014-01-15T01:12:00.003-08:002014-01-15T01:12:58.396-08:00Elephant Journal DebutSo, my most popular published article by a long shot has undergone a makeover [i.e., I've made improving edits] and is now on elephant journal:&nbsp;<a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/01/stripping-the-emotional-condom-anna-mattinger/">Stripping the Emotional Condom</a>.<br /><br />Of course, I want you to click that link. But, if you need me to sell it to you, it's the piece of mine that's had the most dramatic reception. In its original incarnation on Rebelle Society, I received a flock of flattering reader emails, it was added to RS's <i>classics</i>&nbsp;sidebar,&nbsp;and it was selected to be anthologized in their best-of collection.<br /><br />End of pitch.<br /><br />In other news, I just had a lovely few days in Sacramento.<br /><br />Yeah, you read that correctly.<br /><br />Sacramento is decidedly a shithole. However, I have one very good reason to visit; namely, my friend Jason Fassnacht, who is easily one of the most inspiring and generous people I know. Also, I'd be hard-pressed to find a more skilled or dedicated artist anywhere--and I've been around altogether too many artists.<br /><br />His company defies the bounds of what we can gain through company with another human being: a natural anti-depressant, a treatment for writer's block, a catalyst for intrinsic confidence. I meant to spend one night there and wound up staying for three. This is a common phenomenon with his many visitors who'll often stay longer than planned--not upon his request, but theirs.<br /><br />I could gush about him more, but since I'm working on an interview/narrative about him anyway, I figure I might as well save the goods.<br /><br />Anyway.<br /><br />I've got five days to get my shit together before my flight. It hasn't really sunk in yet. I haven't thought about packing.<br /><br />This is what happens every time I embark on any kind of trip. I probably won't realize I'm going to Thailand until I board my plane.<br /><br />So far I know I'm bringing a ukelele [courtesy of Alex's mom--she got one for each of us and told us we can sell them abroad should we go broke, though we're hoping it doesn't come to that], a GoPro, a small microphone. Was going to leave my laptop at home in case my shit got stolen or damaged...but I guess that begs the question of why I feel such a need to bring a GoPro and microphone.<br /><br />Not exceedingly practical, but packing has never been my strong suit.<br /><br />When I broke up with my last boyfriend I decided to adjust to the change by stomping into Yosemite's backcountry with a mason jar of whisky, a machete, a sleeping bag, a bigass garbage bag in case it rained [I rarely backpack with a tent], and nothing else. Oh, my stuffed white tiger. I brought him. I wore a wifebeater and boxer shorts, and Vibram five fingers [which aggravated my tendons after a while, so I opted to finish the loop barefoot].<br /><br />It made for a description-defyingly incredible two weeks.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-86302427812331467422014-01-05T22:30:00.004-08:002014-01-15T15:46:54.622-08:00Call me dramatic, but deleting my Facebook feels like getting clean<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">There are a lot of people out there who don't use Facebook; yet, I've&nbsp;</span>deigned to soapbox about why I decided to delete mine today, as if that's some unique course of action.</span></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">I'm not saying anyone else should delete their account</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—I wouldn't delete mine simply because I was told to, although I do <i>highly</i> recommend&nbsp;<a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/01/how-i-gave-up-facebook-got-a-life/">this article</a>, which helped enforce my own decision. Also, it's much shorter than this ensuing blog post that I've written. [I've made a couple more recommendations at the bottom of this post.]</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I'm asking if we can create an attitude towards social media and socialization in general that is less universally alienating. [Granted, to do so would take a lot more than reforming our use of Facebook, although I think it's a significant perpetrator in recent years.] But r</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">eally, what is dumber than a society of people who feel simultaneously crowded and alone?</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">[As an obvious disclaimer, I don't use Facebook as a marketing platform</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—there are other pockets of the Internet that work better for me in that regard</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—so I'm not considering it in that context. If Facebook was simply what got me paid through its exposure, you can bet your ass I'd milk that cow.]</span><br /><br /></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><b>I. <i>Why </i>Facebook makes us interpersonally impotent</b></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We all know the phenomenon.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You meet someone, you think they’re cool, you’re getting to know each other, you add each other on Facebook.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Then you not only never talk again, but the mere <i>idea</i>&nbsp;of contacting them seems irredeemably awkward. You may be interested, but you can't get it up.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Think I’m full of shit? Go look at your Facebook friends—not on your News Feed, but on your friends list.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">How many of those are people you could contact right now, for no good “reason”, without either of you finding it weird? Hell, how many of them do you even remember?</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And yet, every individual on that list is someone that you personally either deigned to add or accept as a friend. Granted, some people accept everyone who adds them</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—arguably, that begs even more questions about how we perceive others and how we seek validation.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Prematurely adding one another on Facebook, before you're actually friends, is a pretty good way to turn the odds against your ever becoming friends.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">So why does this happen? I think I know.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">In real life, if you meet someone you think is really awesome, you might deign to get to know them better, to talk to them, to hang out with them. You might push yourself a bit to be friendly or outgoing, you might initiate contact or be opportunistic in social settings. If you want to befriend someone there's an impetus to put yourself out there so it can happen.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">But if you talk to someone and jump the gun with, "Hey, you on Facebook?" then you've just taken the pressure off. You can be complacent. They're on your friends list now<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">—you can get in touch with them any time you like. Social procrastination. Time passes.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">And before you know it, the idea of getting in touch with them seems really awkward because, after all, you weren’t <i>really</i> friends with them to begin with, and it's been so long that you can't use a recent&nbsp;</span>interaction as context. There <i>is</i> no context [except, "Hey, I think you're cool and I want to spend time with you," but let's be honest—most people are not willing to be so forthcoming, and it's on the&nbsp;borderline of socially acceptable behavior for adults].</span><br /><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I suppressed my grievances with Facebook the company and kept my account for years because I thought it was necessary for someone with my lifestyle; that is, nomadic and sporadic. For me, there's no&nbsp;externally mandated environment or routine that allows for casually getting to know people over time: no regular school, workplace, organization, or neighborhood.&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #37404e;">Sometimes I break into a&nbsp;social circle and make&nbsp;friends, but&nbsp;those friendships tend not to have any longevity, since I don't stick around for long. If I enjoy someone's presence in my life and want it to continue, I have to be proactive about it, rather than just assuming I'll see them around.</span><br /><span style="color: #37404e;"><br /></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">As a result, I have a lot of single-serving friends, and I’ve&nbsp;<i>been</i>&nbsp;a single-serving friend countless times. It's awesome, but it gets old.&nbsp;The people I really connect with tend to be as impossible to get a hold of as I am; the people who are easy to get a hold of may be lovely, but usually aren’t people I can relate to much [due to differences in our current experiences and values]. Catch-22. Hence, Facebook.</span></div><div style="min-height: 19px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Except...on my friends list are a lot of people I used to be very close to, people I'm almost-but-not-quite actually truly friends with, people with whom I deeply connected for a short while, people with whom things were left off awkwardly or without closure...and people with whom I've never been close, but who like my photos and status updates and insist we "catch up sometime". As if there were some past relationship of value for us TO catch up to. As if we’d fallen behind.</span></div><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Constantly, I'm sent hypothetical pleas to give someone a call, to make a return visit to their town, to crash at their new apartment.&nbsp;</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">If I jot them down on my list of people to contact when I do return to their town, they act like I've crossed a social boundary somehow just for sending a Facebook message asking if they want to grab a drink. Hey, </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>you</i> told me to get in touch the next time I headed to Boston/Seattle/wherever, so I did. I'm not stalking you or trying to fuck you; the fact that I'm </span><i style="letter-spacing: 0px;">in</i><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">&nbsp;your town at all means I had other reasons to come here.</span><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span>Here's the clincher, for me: I probably get a hell of a lot <i>less</i>&nbsp;of this than others do. I'm a self-sufficient twenty-three year old female; people aren't so quick to deem me creepy. What if I were a bit older? Or male?<br /><br />How much of this are <i>other</i>&nbsp;people getting<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—and is that why people do this kind of insincere-reach-out crap? Because they've gotten jaded and given up?</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><br /></div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Meanwhile, online dating become increasingly mainstream</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">Generally, when people sign up for those sites, they damn well intend to meet someone in person eventually. It's to be expected that you may contact or be contacted by a&nbsp;<i>total stranger</i>, talk a bit, and agree to meet up with hopes of getting laid, falling in love, killing time, or whatever.</span></span><br /><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Why is&nbsp;<i>that</i>&nbsp;widely acceptable, whereas trying to get to know someone you don’t&nbsp;<i>really</i>&nbsp;know already—but apparently know well enough to be “friends” with—and asking them to hang out is considered borderline creepy, invasive, or desperate?&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Moreover, it’s not being the one to&nbsp;<i>suggest</i>&nbsp;meeting up who gets deemed the creepy one—it’s the person who deigns to follow up.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">What&nbsp;<i>I</i>&nbsp;think is creepy is people who respond to one of your new photos out of the blue and insist that you need to hang out, and then find it weird when you say, “Sure, next week?”</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">I’m all for spur-of-the-moment reunions or self-imposed half-blind dates. But in many cases, being Facebook friends is not a sufficient springboard to actually interacting, even via Facebook chat or Wall post, let alone in person.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Then <i>why</i> is it not weird that you can see each other’s updates and personal information—where you went to school, where they live, where you work, what their baby looks like, what your boyfriend looks like, how their new dye job looks? How is <i>that</i>&nbsp;less creepy?</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We’re teaching ourselves that socializing is an ebb and flow of exhibitionism and voyeurism.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>II. An army of self-inducing obscure celebrities</b></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Maybe you don’t chew on that rock or that leaf. Maybe you don’t skip or laugh loudly in public. Maybe you suck in your tummy when you walk. Maybe you don’t pick your nose or bite your nails.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">We’re all dictated by conditioned societal and self-inflicted pressures that we aren’t constantly aware of, though they may surface from our subconscious from time to time.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Today, in the form of a rather unflattering revelation, one of my own surfaced:</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">At times, I gauge the quality of my own life less by my own happiness and closeness to those I love and more by how appealing I can make it sound on Facebook. The moments that have made me the happiest tend to be ones I can't or won't share on Facebook, yet in retrospect I've come to dismiss those moments because they had no third-party audience.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I put my life on the Internet to be used as porn by the bored and unfulfilled who want to look at the greener grass on the other side.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I put my life on the Internet, and then what? I accrue meaningless likes and comments from people who aren’t taking part in it, rather than focusing on the people who are. If anything, the validation of strangers recorded on a public platform almost starts to seem more important. I don’t remember who’s “liked” what, and neither do they, but if the number is low then it almost feels as if some sort of judgment has been passed—like I lost the daily interestingness pageant.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">The thing is, I don't consider myself to be someone who really cares what other people think. At least, I don't think I used to be.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And the crazier thing is, as far as seeking validation goes, I'm focusing more attention on how many people made fleeting, meaningless, instantly-forgotten acknowledgments of some post of mine [probably forgetting them the instant after clicking "Like"</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—do you remember what posts you've liked this week?] than on earnest validation from people that are actually in my life.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">I feel like I'm in some removed position of mini-celebrity, with far more fans than friends. And while my heart/soul/better judgment despise the idea of dwelling on fans, my ego's been eating it up.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You know what's nice about not being a celebrity? Privacy, intimacy, and being seen for who you are rather than a glamorized persona. Keeping your toes dipped in real life.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">You know what's [er, arguably] nice about being a real celebrity? Fame and fortune.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">Thanks to social networking, we subject ourselves to a manufactured notoriety that doesn't actually grant us any of the "glamour" that actual celebrities get in exchange for having their personal lives made into a&nbsp;public spectacle. Yet so many of us choose to do this to ourselves, more or less.</span></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Right now, it's easy. I'm a reasonably attractive and articulate young girl from a first-world country living a charmed life and with energy to burn; the world is my oyster and right now I could afford to be shallow and frivolous if I so chose.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span>Right now, if I was lonely or bored and wanted attention, I could Instagram my cleavage. BOOM. False adulation.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If all that won’t teach a kid to feel both entitled and self-conscious and to devalue the meaningful relationships in her life, I don’t know what will.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">And while my sense still has my ego reined in, I don't want to push it. I want to spend my time on things--and people--that cause me to look back and feel glad that they're what I chose to spend it on.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>III. Generating social retardation, ambiguity, and expectations that wouldn't naturally exist</b></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">As I said earlier, I have a lot of single-serving friends. People who switch up their location [and hobbies, interests, and lifestyle] all the time tend to.</span></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This used to be more than fine with me—in&nbsp;</span>fact, it was a huge perk<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">. I could meet people for a day, appreciate our time together, and then move on, knowing it had run its course and appreciating it as a beautiful moment. I got to experience such a variety of people!</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Facebook's turned me into something of a people-hoarder, at least in theory, leaving me less sure of how to categorize the different interactions in my life.</span></span></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Now I'll become friends with someone on Facebook, and they become a source of discomfort. In seeing their updates it may be hard to maintain my former illustrious opinion of them, or I may feel compelled to get to know them better and I may write them, to be met with an awkward response back, as if they’re saying, “Uh, yeah, that one time was cool, but uh—that was then?”</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Which is fine. But then why the fuck are we friends on Facebook, if not to leave the door open for being in touch? If there's no possibility we're ever going to interact again, why the hell would I want to keep abreast of your whereabouts?</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">It's left me with an eerie sense of social ineptitude, of having no inherent knowledge of where boundaries lie. I've always been a bit&nbsp;awkward and bad at picking up on social cues [I could almost never identify sarcasm before about age sixteen, and the first time a boy asked me out I threw it in his face because I somehow interpreted it as him making fun of me...mwop, mwop], hence the high value I place on candor.</span></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">In real life? I'm groovy; no one intimidates me. I'll meet a person. The progression feels natural. There comes a time where it's obvious whether we want to keep hanging out</span><span style="color: #37404e;">—</span><span style="color: #37404e;">or wish each other well and move on along<i>, </i>regardless of how much we connected. Sometime it's all about the shared moment, no follow-up needed.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">Facebook turns everyone into a big </span><i style="color: #37404e;">What if?</i><span style="color: #37404e;">&nbsp;and prevents me from either fully letting go of or progressing within a given relationship. I wind up sitting in limbo in a virtual stew of others' masturbatory exhibitionism. I'm nostalgic enough already without it being artificially perpetuated. [And for that matter, I get annoyed&nbsp;enough with people in real life without&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #37404e;">seeing the shit some of them post on Facebook as if they're personally trying to induce misanthropy.]</span></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">Here's how I'd see it: If you were on my friends list? You could contact me.</span></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;">Even if things got weird with us, or it'd been a long time, or we didn't know each other well, I'd be receptive.</span></span></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><br /></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">If I couldn't be receptive, you'd be off my friends list. Easy. Over the years, I've deleted hundreds of people. Anyone remaining could assume that I'd welcome correspondence, even if I hadn't recently been considering it myself.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>IV. In an actual friendship, Facebook is redundant</b></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">As I've said, Facebook houses my fan base and couchsurfing shortcuts.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">People I’ve collected in hopes that they may be of future use. People I met and liked and added, vaguely receptive to the idea that we may become friends, by chance, without being willing to put any actual effort into it, or initiate anything lasting. People who've added me for whatever reason, who sift through the details of my life and like every single one of my photos or updates, but are conspicuously absent if I respond to one of their comments.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">To quote the fox in&nbsp;<i>The Little Prince</i>:</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">“One only understands the things that one tames….Men have no more time to understand anything. They buy things all ready-made at the shops. But there is no shop anywhere where one can buy friendship, and so men have no friends any more.”</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Facebook is not the means to a friendship. Rather, if a true friendship is preexisting, Facebook can be a potential supplement—like emails and phone calls. In the context of a true friendship, Facebook is never necessary.</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Through my transient lifestyle, in an age of social media, I've had to re-learn what a friend is.&nbsp;</span></span><br /><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">They're people you get to know over repeated shared experiences—laughing, crying, exploring, getting scared, and getting fucked up in real time—not over a couple grand one-shot adventures and subsequent conversations that feel like an uphill attempt at connection. They’re people who become valuable to you, in part, because of the time you’ve lost to them. [That's my second reference to&nbsp;<i>The Little Prince </i>in this post</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—can you tell I just discovered that book today?</span><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">]</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e; min-height: 16px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">A relationship is a process, it flows, fluctuates, evolves—probably not forever, but for a while.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">It’s not a solitary magical week in Portland, it’s not a single night of great conversation in the desert.&nbsp;</span></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">It’s those things—plus a next time.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">I've had a thousand phantasmagorical, explosive adventures with new faces. That's how I met the boy I'm in love with, and a couple of my best friends. T</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">he difference is simply that all those other people were ones with whom I decided the connection could or should die with the adventure; we were supporting characters that had no place in one another's lives after&nbsp;the bells and whistles were taken away. However, amidst that tide of people were a few I knew I wanted to <i>know</i></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—in the daylight, in our hometowns, while sober. I met him at my first month-long Burning Man stint, a land of lights and drugs and serendipity [and many other boys], and then we parted ways, thinking it might've just been the magic of where we were. Two months later, we met back up</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—in the context of suburbs and restaurants</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—and the magic hadn't diminished. We laughed raucously through the grocery store.</span><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">And it’s not just the exciting parts—it’s the kids you want to hang out with the morning after, while you’re all hungover.</span></div></div><div style="min-height: 16px;"><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span><br /></span></div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">These are subtle things that you can't evaluate from a distance, from an artificial platform like Facebook, where a person can show you whatever sides of themselves they want to. To know what a person doesn't [or does] mean to you, you've got to observe them in real time, and see how you respond to one another. [Hence my increasing confusion about what I think of different people since Facebook became a common denominator in my interactions</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">—some people look really cool through my News Feed, and then I meet up with them and can't fucking stand them; others may be fantastic people, but not in a way that shines&nbsp;through their Facebook presence.]&nbsp;</span><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">Besides, I don’t want to “catch up” or “go out”. Much less talk about doing those things, never to do them.&nbsp;</span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">I want to talk, and I want to play.</span></div></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">***</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">This is all just me. Perhaps I'm just a bit more neurotic than everyone else, but I have a hunch that some of you&nbsp;out there can relate.&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">And again, I'm not calling for the end of social media</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">it's not going anywhere, and it's got a lot of good points [after all, I've been a loyal user for about seven years]. Maybe I'm trying to vouch for a shift in collective consciousness when it comes to how we approach it. It's a cliche now to mention that globalization has led to increased alienation and loneliness for the individual</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">—but how </span><i style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">sad</i><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">&nbsp;that that's become a cliche observation. Let's do something about it. Remember how nervous people used to get when calling someone they liked for the first time? Remember taking the time to write someone an email</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—or a letter? To personally invite someone to something? Grow a pair; fucking</span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">&nbsp;reach out.</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">And hey, if that shift happens...who knows? I might find myself crawling right back. 8P</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><b><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">PS.&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Recommended things that are all shorter than this post [in order]</span></b></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://vimeo.com/70534716">The Innovation of Loneliness [Video]</a></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;">This video has won several awards; it's simple and poignant. It's less than five minutes long. Watch it, asshole. Then share it on Facebook. Nyak. 8P</div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://cs.swan.ac.uk/~cswill/The_little_prince.pdf">The Little Prince</a></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;">So...this isn't really relevant to my post [and also isn't shorter than my post], but it's relevant to me, since I just read it. If you haven't, you probably should [it's the length of, say, three normal children's story books, easy to squeeze in at bedtime, during breakfast, or on a lunch break]. I much prefer Richard Howard's translation to this one, but couldn't find it online.</div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/01/how-i-gave-up-facebook-got-a-life/">How I Gave Up Facebook and Got a Life</a></span></div><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #37404e;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">In case you didn't click my link up top, this article's great. Generally I find e.j.'s content click-friendly but ultimately disappointing, mainly designed to&nbsp;</span>tempt page views through recycled wisdom and topical kitschrather than content that's actually sustainably valuable&nbsp;<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">[just calling it as I see it]</span></span></span><span style="color: #37404e; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">—this may be&nbsp;<i>their</i>&nbsp;<i>first article</i>&nbsp;<i>I've ever been&nbsp;pleasantly surprised by </i>in that regard<i>.</i></span><br /><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"><a href="http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/shouts/2013/06/what-happens-when-you-deactivate-your-facebook-account.html">What Happens When You Deactivate</a>&nbsp;</span></div><div style="color: #37404e;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">Frivolous. 8]</span></div></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-34272386917169779032013-12-21T03:59:00.004-08:002013-12-22T18:33:42.552-08:00Hometown ErrandsThe impeccable purgatory that is the Silicon Valley. In this current incarnation: hairy eyeballs, mermaid repellant, cyberpunk insects, free bourgeois s'mores, my first taste of mulled wine. Monologuing through miles of walking through San Francisco twilight along the shore of a twinkling underpass. The usual running-into-people-I-haven't-seen-in-five-or-six-years-en-route-to-the-dentist.<br /><br />Forgive me, I may be riddled with nostalgia. This region has that effect on me. In particular, I can never hang around the South Bay too long for fear of getting cavities in my sentiment.<br /><br />Or something: words.<br /><br />Insomnia, again. Currently on my buddy's couch in Oakland with work tomorrow morning as, thankfully, I've scored a few zero-notice gigs practicing massage, modeling, editing, and so on.<br /><br />The last time I visited this apartment I left it with a jar of coffee beans I'd roasted* myself after he'd taught me how, a volume of Hunter S. Thompson's letters [which I've just recently begun reading], a decorative stuffed dog for my sister, and a Colombian machete [which has chaperoned me during some of my more questionable excursions]. I've come away from other visits here with green tasseled-and-sequined nipple pasties I was gifted at a vendor booth when I went to see my first burlesque show, Hello Kitty temporary tattoos, and handfuls out of my Dominican cigar collection [a gift sent from Alaska by a one-day acquaintance], which he's been keeping safe for me for almost a year now. I'm down to my last eight-to-ten of them.<br /><br />People are really good to me, a lot of the time, and I can't help but think there's not much reason for it. Not that I'm particularly undeserving, but I'm not particularly deserving, either.<br /><br />It's gotten me thinking about the value of maintaining friendships. When you live in a particular town, when you've got a job or are otherwise part of some regular assembly of people, friends are a no-brainer. But running around plan-free, often leaving town as soon as anyone knows I've shown up, with diverse and inconsistent interests...it gets wonky, trying to figure out how other people fit in, or how they <i>should</i>&nbsp;fit in.<br /><br />This year I've been so project-oriented, and alternately solitary and lovebird-ified. For months I basically forgot I <i>had</i>&nbsp;friends to begin with, and it was making me start to feel like a hermit/sociopath/ghost/asshole/etc.<br /><br />So, I've been doling myself out for the standard social engagements, like introducing Alex to my high school paramour and his current ladymajigg over donuts at 3:00 a.m., running up and down the concrete slabs of a muddy reservoir with people I've known since middle school but only recently recognized as kindred spirits, that kind of thing.<br /><br />Oh, and showing old friends and short-term strangers around an underground suburban gem I discovered with a couple of my homies-of-the-era when we were twelve.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oOyjrGwzVaI/UrUOpOEuhnI/AAAAAAAAACc/aQc3uPCTGCk/s1600/IMG_0018.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-oOyjrGwzVaI/UrUOpOEuhnI/AAAAAAAAACc/aQc3uPCTGCk/s320/IMG_0018.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">In high school, whenever I was interested in a boy but didn't know him too well, I'd try to bring him exploring through these tunnels with me, as a test. If they were weenies about walking a quarter mile in the dark through a couple inches of water, I moved on. By definition, all high school girls have to be fickle and, in some small and often superficial way, unyielding. No?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hbxot_OxNJE/UrUPFak0j9I/AAAAAAAAACk/sCjNewOQ0Yg/s1600/Tunnel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hbxot_OxNJE/UrUPFak0j9I/AAAAAAAAACk/sCjNewOQ0Yg/s320/Tunnel.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A. Actual appearance of the end of the tunnel...</td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R5MCOQSmmJw/UrUOjjK0ZPI/AAAAAAAAACU/7it3C2DCvhg/s1600/IMG_0016.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-R5MCOQSmmJw/UrUOjjK0ZPI/AAAAAAAAACU/7it3C2DCvhg/s320/IMG_0016.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">B. ...and the same photo, with flash</td></tr></tbody></table>Anyway. Over the years [at least since I figured out the truth about Santa Claus**], I've gotten to know December as that pesky month that besieges me from one side with drifting malaise and from the other with an irrational survival anxiety. Fortunately, I'm often [though not always] more articulate when I have to fight for my peace of mind--and often more compelled to make sense of things by writing, for "just as some people turn to religion to find meaning, the writer turns to his craft and tries to impose meaning, or to lift the meaning out of chaos and put it in order", or so wrote the preeminent Hunter S.<br /><br />Why did I just write this? Thought Catalog just&nbsp;published <a href="http://thoughtcatalog.com/anna-mattinger/2013/12/why-your-yoga-practice-isnt-for-me/">this rambley doodad</a>&nbsp;of mine,&nbsp;but why did I write <i>that</i>? Why do I write anything? Maybe if I write for long enough, I'll figure it out.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1490634_10202762383042144_1874305188_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-prn2/1490634_10202762383042144_1874305188_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><i>*when I originally posted this I'd written "ground", because my&nbsp;brain doesn't work anymore.</i><br /><i>**that</i>&nbsp;<i>he's</i>&nbsp;<i>a Communist! Or have your parents not told you yet?</i>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-50161197489735260642013-12-15T04:13:00.000-08:002013-12-20T19:01:38.406-08:00A Case Study of Cough Syrup's Effects on the MindThree weeks of vague bronchial sickery have gotten me on a bit of an existential bender...albeit not an intellectual one, since being sick makes me sluggish in the head. On the plus side, I guess that sluggishness helps put a ceiling on how much I can overphilosophize myself into a catatonic meatsack, which--when one is confined to a bed--is ultimately a blessing.<br /><br />Case in point: last week I watched all three seasons of <i>Game of Thrones</i>&nbsp;in under forty-eight hours.<br /><br />Nonetheless, I've been reading and writing a good deal. I finally pulled myself together enough to submit some new material, and my admittedly gimmickally-titled article&nbsp;<a href="http://www.collective-evolution.com/2013/12/14/6-ways-to-go-beyond-conditioning/">6 Ways to Transcend Your Conditioning</a>&nbsp;has just been published on Collective Evolution. Feeling pretty groovy gravy on that front. 8]<br /><br />I've gone to sleep no earlier than 4:00am in weeks. It's getting ridiculous. I tried the pull-a-one-nighter-to-reboot-your-sleep-schedule trick [<i>ahem</i>, three seasons in forty-eight hours], which was decidedly fruitless.<br /><br />And here I am again.<br /><br />Regarding cough syrup, I am imprudent in metering dosage, and won't touch anything containing active ingredients other than dextromethorphan, pseudoephedrine, or guaifenesin, depending. Fuck diphenhydramine, for instance. I mention this preference only in reference to the title of this post.<br /><br />Uh, in other news.<br /><br />Yesterday night I stayed up until 6:00am talking about superficial privilege, pyrotechnics, and bitcoin with one of my best friends in the world. We grew up together, are simultaneously nothing alike and everything alike, and I predict he'll become egregiously wealthy while I'm off climbing the rooftops of some beach town barefoot in pajamas.<br /><br />Today I ate fresh handmade noodles and went to a choral concert.<br /><br />Tomorrow I'll figure out when I'm flying to Thailand, and cram in some anatomy and Latin [a formerly useless interest of mine that's been reignited, thanks to today's concert] as a way to further preclude catching up with some other friends I've been meaning to see [ah, how sociable December makes me].<br /><br />And now? I'm going to harass a certain inamorato of mine who's exiled himself to Ableton-land because he can't sleep, either.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-40244436815186600892013-12-01T21:37:00.003-08:002013-12-01T21:37:39.796-08:00For Now, an Uninspired Post on My Lack of Inspiration [But with Better Things to Come] <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>562</o:Words> <o:Characters>3207</o:Characters> <o:Company>NASA Ames Research Center/De Anza College</o:Company> <o:Lines>26</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>6</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>3938</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <br /><div class="MsoNormal">November 29<sup>th</sup>, 2013</div><div class="MsoNormal">Grass Valley, CA</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The problem with trying to write about my life [besides a vague feeling that I’m masturbating in public] is that it’s not only arranged along an axis of time, but also linked through recurring circumstance, mindset, etc. The events of my life don’t come in self-evident packages, and I’ve attempted to slice my life into “episodes” any number of times so as to be able to write about Something without it being torn apart in the vacuum of memory by every possible association I could draw—ultimately these “episodes” are as arbitrary as political borders. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">I could chronologically work my way through a particular trip, or else catalog the experiences I’ve had with a prominent person, or in a particular place. Deliberating over how I should organize my writing has caused me to backlog the fuck out of everything, obsessively rearranging half-formed snippets of writing like Tangrams, trying to figure out how to present them together as composites, instead of just working to finish them. All of this has finally led me to one infuriating deliverance of a conclusion: Fuck it, this is just self-righteous procrastination. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">So…I guess all that’s left is to write. Otherwise the unfinished .docx files will just keep piling up, as they have for years.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">***</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Quickly approaching is the last night I expect to spend in Gold Country for a while [which, of course, could just as easily mean a few months as it could the rest of my life]. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Of course, with no one around except Alex, two dogs, and a declining number of chickens, I’ve been naked for the greater part of a week, except for a pair of moccasin boots a girl had forgotten in my car earlier that year, and a fleece blanket I’ve wrapped myself in in accordance with the setting sun.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Outside, a large pond [occasionally patronized by a river otter, supposedly], a hot tub [frequently patronized by Alex and myself, beer and cigarettes in tow], the best tree swing I’ve ever met, a massage-and-yoga-retreat-space-to-be, disc golf targets, an RV and a shed or two, ample space.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The chicken issue has been bothering me—I’ve been stationed here with a very small set of responsibilities: to make sure the dog food doesn’t run out, and to make sure the chickens are let out of their run each morning and locked up again by nightfall.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">First the number dwindled mysteriously from six to five without my seeing or hearing a thing, and last night when I went to close up the run I came across just one quiet, wary bird, though I’d seen the other four puttering around only a couple hours ago. I’ve since invested a lot of anxiety into this.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Alex has been trying to reassure me, “This shit just happens. Free range chickens get eaten—sometimes a cat shows up. It’s not your fault—you’ve been here, doing everything you’ve been asked to do, everything they’d be doing if they weren’t on vacation. There’s no way to keep an eye on this entire property all day—it’s huge.” </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Mostly my anxiety’s been in a lack of inspiration. We’ve been sitting around, watching movies and TV, eating, drinking, a bit of reading. Not the writing—or, failing that, the debauchery—I felt would do my stay here justice.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">***</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Fourteen months ago marked my arrival in Nevada City for the first time.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Five months before that, my friend Christina had given me my first Thai massage in exchange for my teaching her to ski. She mentioned off-hand that she thought I’d be good at massage and might try pursuing it myself, and recommended two schools. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but a couple months later I impulsively signed up for both—Ahern’s 200-hour intensive and Spirit Winds’ entire curriculum of Thai massage classes—which totaled to a $5200 whim, without seriously considering whether I’d ever get a return on the investment. It might turn into a new vocation or a new passion, or it might not. I had the money for the time being and thought it’d be better spent on exploring a new skill than on rent or more stuff and things.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">***</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>628</o:Words> <o:Characters>3582</o:Characters> <o:Company>NASA Ames Research Center/De Anza College</o:Company> <o:Lines>29</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>7</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>4398</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">I coax Alex to come outside for a cigarette, and suddenly the answers to my stagnation come pouring out.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“You know, my first impulse on that last day of class was to arrange when I could come back—to sign up to re-take some classes and deepen my training, and to return to Nevada City for little vacations from life, now that I’m familiar enough with this place to be comfortable, and have people I know I could stay with. Or just to take some more massage classes, in general. But, really, that’s what this whole year’s been, and my memory’s been vague. I’ve been living the same pinball life, but honestly, I’ve been on crutches.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“So you think you just want to close up this chapter?”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Yeah. At least for a long, long time—at least until coming back would feel completely new again. We’ve done so much cool shit this year, but it’s largely been things we both knew how to prepare for. Working festivals was a cool new experience, but it only takes doing one to know what kind of experience to expect on at least a basic level, so I don’t want to do it again. Even being on a Burning Man project where I’d learn new skills, like this year—of course it’d be a new experience, but not the same kind of new. I’d know some of the people, the sort of skills I’d be learning. Going to New Zealand, at this point in our lives, even though I’ve never been—I’ve got an idea of what we’d be doing there, and who’d be there. Sarah said when she went, it almost felt just like visiting relatives, since the trip was structured around people she already knew, doing things like what she’s already been doing. I want to go, but not right now—not when we’d have such an obvious itinerary.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“I’m with you. That’s why I suggested we skip New Zealand. Southeast Asia’s something neither of us have a real concept of, except for stories we’ve heard.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Exactly. And I know it’s kind of the standard baby’s-first-backpacking-trip, it’d be new for us, and neither of us has any idea what we’d end up doing there once we arrive. And that’s when I feel alive, and when I feel inspired. And this week I came here to house-sit, all isolated and comfortable and hoping I’d be able to write. And all I’ve really done is looked through old writing I never quite finished, wondering where all my inspiration’s gone. Till today, now that we’re about to leave. And we’ve done so much cool shit this year, I couldn’t figure out why I haven’t been inspired by it. But now it’s obvious. This year’s been just as dynamic and full from an outsider’s perspective as last—but I always knew what was coming. I planned most of it. The times this year we’ve been happiest—in general, with ourselves, with each other—have been the times we were winging it and didn’t know what we’d be doing in ten minutes, two hours, two days. And times like that have been in the minority for a while. And it’s gotten me so lazy. Scared to go abroad because I don’t have tons of money—but really, I’ve got money for a plane ticket, and then some. I probably have enough to reserve as a small cushion for when we get back. What’s the problem? And yet I’ve been resistant. It’s just inertia, really….”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">The town hasn’t changed, and Janice’s classes are all pretty similar in structure, but that internal difference in my approach is the variable that matters. It almost feels like a betrayal—to fall in love with a place, then slowly come to realize it’s becoming stifling when, after all, there are still more things to learn and do and see within it. I must just be fickle—it’s my problem, not the town’s. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">And that’s true, in a way. But the point isn’t for me to chastise myself and try and force an effort to keep my passions for places, lifestyles, or experiences alive—the point is that my favorite thing about life is that there’s so much contained within it that I’ll never run out of things to sample, and that process of sampling is what’s shaped me.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">Alex is looking off into space, shivering a bit, but I know he’s heard me. Most of the time, he’s figured things out the same time I do—or sooner. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">I gather my blanket up and head inside, full of gratitude. “Let’s get out of here tomorrow and get those tickets, and keep living. I think I’m going to go write, finally.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Yes. Good. I like that.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Want to play in a bit? We should clean up around here soon, too.”</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">“Just finish whatever you start.”</div><!--EndFragment-->Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-63622455749703808882013-11-22T22:36:00.001-08:002013-11-22T22:38:22.706-08:00Nano-Rhino<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">In 2012 I participated in&nbsp;<a href="http://nanowrimo.org/">National Novel Writing Month</a>&nbsp;for the first time, on a friend's suggestion. Hoping to finish early enough to leave time that month to reunite with a boy I'd met at Burning Man, I cut off all other activities [minus taking a Thai massage class--which, incidentally, is what I'm doing this week as well] and isolated myself in trendy coffee shops, surviving on quiche and biscotti in an obsessive fervor.</span><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It paid off. I finished in just over two weeks, partied that night to celebrate with some of those people I'd been militantly ignoring in the pursuit of raising my word count, then went on a loop around the Southwest that played out like an absurdist's wet dream with the boy I'd then just met and am now still disgusting-twitterpated over.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Yeah, though, NaNoWriMo. I'd recommend it to anyone vaguely interested in creative writing, but especially to writers [or would-be writers] held back by an edit-as-you-go neurosis [like me], which can be paralytic to those who'd rather not write at all than risk writing something bad. It's all about quantity over quality.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Of course, busting out 50,000 words of fiction in two weeks means a lot of what I wrote is irredeemable garbage, and some of it is probably beyond comprehension--but I figure that's kind of the point.&nbsp;And eventually I might even go back and try to tie it all into something that makes a little more sense--that's both the luxury and the daunting pressure of writing fiction, for a change. I can edit people in and out on a whim, change the ending, all that jazz--but then, of course, I'm completely responsible for it, whereas real life I can just buff up and relay--<i>BAM!</i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">It's November again, but I'm not ass-cannoning a draft this year. However, in the spirit of what I think is a really awesome idea, here's an excerpt plucked from last year's:</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">---</span><br /><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I don’t love a city for its seafood restaurants, its commercial avenues, its people. I don’t love a city for its fashion sense, it’s street fairs, its local haunts. Not for its level of criminal activity, and for neither its cheap taco trucks nor its fine dining. Not for its music scene, its job market, its housing prices, its public transit, its prevalence of free parking. Not for its street performers nor its lack thereof, not for its office buildings nor its historical districts, its Chinatowns, its nightlife.</span></i></div><div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;&nbsp;What’s left?</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I love a city for its rooftops, its sewers, its abandoned warehouses. For penetrable structures that were never meant to be penetrated, and never designed with aesthetics or comfort in mind. I love a city for its shut down buildings. I love those taggers who are artists and historians more than vandals, whose marks on such relics are like a nod “hello” from across a crowd too dense for you to swim through in order to reach one another. A nod “I see you.” A nod “I know.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Just as I love a person for their disgusting idiosyncracies, the momentum of their bodies—a biological autonomy their minds can’t veto. Not for their “unique sense of style” or their “quirkiness”, or the bullshit traits they construct and exaggerate with the hopes of seeming interesting or mysterious.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I love a person for the way they cry when there’s no more holding back, some variety of viscous release oozing from every hole in their blotched head. For the silent pleas they make to themselves when they wank off—not the bullshit moans they make to convince their partner that they’ve given themselves up to the experience when they’ve done anything but. I love a person for their insomnia. I love a person for the things they’ll never admit to me: their neurotic fascination with vomit, or their habit of occasionally eating their earwax or boogers or scabs when no one’s around, or of smelling the insides of their piercings or biting off their toenails, or their fetishistic attraction to whatever. For the way their smell changes as they get older, that subtle fermentation. For their private rituals and traditions so deeply ingrained into the clockwork of their lives that they don’t even realize they’re secrets, for the private superstitions that they deny humoring. For the things they might look up, the Facebook profiles they might sift through of their long-gone-someones from five relationships ago, the pictures they might save so long hoping no one else will ever know. For the way they handle the unspeakable indiscretions—accidentally running over someone else’s cat, accidentally shitting in someone else’s shower, accidentally sexting someone else. The momentary freezing, followed by the dichotomous fight-or-flight, and whatever cover-ups their overloaded brains can cough up. For the way some of them might sit up at night, alone, stricken by some secret terror, some grand Question that suddenly makes them feel as if their entire life is a worthless sham and what the hell can they do about it so that they don’t sit up at night feeling that way?</i></span></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Riding the bus I could see our reflections in the scratched-up windows. We matched. Dark oversize hoodies and jeans, hair covered in dust and cobwebs, faces worn out and stretched thin from the abuse we’d been subjecting our bodies to, extra-gaunt under the fluorescent light, which gave way to blemishes that would be invisible during the daytime, under the more forgiving light of the sun. On the back of the bus slept a crumpled man in a crumpled suit, but otherwise it was empty save for the two of us.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>As if picking up from the middle of a conversation, Kai asked me, “Why didn’t you go?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“What, why? Because I’m sick of being elected Mama, and I don't want to hear about Gary's dog's bladder infection or about how he's getting fat or his dad died eight years ago or his rent. He's sent me pictures, too. The dent in his car, himself drunk and crying. He's been drunk all the time. Hence all the bitching."&nbsp;<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Passive-aggressive, much?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Fuck off--I've told him to stop calling so much, and anyway who has the energy to be on-the-table all the fucking time, with fucking everybody? So, I’ve been harboring a bit of resentment, yeah. I guess that part's my bad, not his.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Everybody? I thought you guys were hooking up?"</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Ha. You're cute."</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"If not, you should consider it—that’s generally the easiest way to get rid of him.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Whether or not I could stomach that anymore, he won’t even.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“’Won’t even…’? Have you seriously tried and failed?”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“I used to think I liked him or something, before I learned he's an energy vampire.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>Kai raised an eyebrow at my non-answer answer but allowed me to divert the conversation, so I did.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“Like, the whole sucking blood, only he tries to drain my well-being. He doesn’t just want to confide in me—he wants to get under my skin and make me feel his pain, but constantly. Like he can outsource his shit and feel better. So he wants me to be on fucking call, to feel guilty when I’m happy and he’s not. I don’t know when he decided I owed that to him, but there you go.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“That’s a side of him I’ve never heard of, and I’ve known the guy for years. Also, you don’t seem like the maternal type. You're not the right mode of bitch.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“See, that’s what I think, too. I keep getting elected without running. Like I said."<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“I don't know if I buy that. You make yourself out to sound all innocent, but it's not hard to picture some very conscious manipulative tendencies in you. But what do I know? And anyway, I've never seen you in action.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>“You just never put my boot to your skull. And you’re probably right, on some level. I’m just a disenfranchised girl caught in a web of disenfranchised men caught in my web.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>"Now you're just romanticizing yourself. I never said that."&nbsp;</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-indent: 0.5in;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>The bus reached its last stop and we reemerged into some forgotten infrastructural corner of the night, the air smelling of smog and promise.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>I lagged behind a bit, taking it all in. It’s not that there was a whole lot to see—industrial buildings and warehouses, a monochromatic network of steel pipes and concrete. Dark unlit streets, the shadows of the part of the city that is a part of the default world. Pavement looking like the teeth of someone who’s been making out with a sledgehammer.</i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>But there was a thrum to these neighborhoods, a dark pulse. The pulse of the former, the never-beens, the long-dead. The negative space, the pause between places.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i>If all the world’s a stage, then these places I sought out were backstage, collectively forming a subtropolis of which I was the sole citizen. That citizenship wasn’t defined on a physical level, and I was never the first or only to walk across the thresholds of these places—but when I occupied them, the former residents or employees, the builders of these places, the taggers, the teenaged summer flings craving heated solitude, the strung-out shadowselves, the other explorers like me, even Kai, were all as incorporeal as ghosts.&nbsp;</i></span></div></div></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-1567115450138378492013-11-17T20:24:00.001-08:002013-12-14T15:47:20.091-08:00Anyone home?After almost three months, I'm back. It's been a while since I've had regular Internet access.<br /><div><br /></div><div>I've spent the day scrounging up some more miscellaneous writing [old and new], which I'll be posting over the coming little-while [i.e., I'll have another post up within a couple days], but thought I'd throw up a quick scatterbrained update just to assert that, yes, I'm still here, and no, this particular blog hasn't yet been hucked into the virtual landfill of countless abandoned webpages.</div><div><br /></div><div>Oh! For starters, I've been published by Rebelle Society again. A poem this time. I actually wrote the poem when I was seventeen, but hadn't submitted or shared it until now [it's taken me a while to get over my poetry-sharing jitters and biases]. <a href="http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/10/29/summary-of-the-night-poetry/" target="_blank">And here it is! Bam!</a></div><div><br /></div><div>Otherwise, in case anyone's interested, this is a brief summary of where I've been:</div><div><br /></div><div>--On the playa for a couple weeks--the first of which was spent working exhaustively on Skyler's Escapade: the big, bad fire-shooting monstrosity built mostly by our five-man crew, that was to sit atop the sixty-five foot bamboo Control Tower [pictured below].&nbsp;At one point, this involved my getting on top of the Tower in nothing but a climbing harness and hard hat [not pictured below]. Then, of course, there was the whole Burning Man thing itself.</div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/1380049_2325783017467_484914615_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc3/1380049_2325783017467_484914615_n.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Control Tower at sunrise; photo by my friend Miko</td></tr></tbody></table><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/1176369_2296516685827_936621959_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://scontent-b-sjc.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn1/1176369_2296516685827_936621959_n.jpg" width="213" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dancetronauts party in front of the Control Tower. <br />Not pictured: the flame effects crew [which included myself] gleefully pushing buttons while yelling cathartically.<br />Photo: <a href="http://jasonmongue.com/">Jason Mongue</a></td></tr></tbody></table><div>--Hedonistically decompressing, first at a snazzy oceanfront property in Capitola, mainly with friends from overseas, then in Reno for a week, where I was overloaded with decadent cheese and beer and stayed up past sunrise nightly talking and laughing with good friends, clearing some deadwood out of my life.</div><div><br /></div><div>--Up in Oregon with my co-person, where we spent three days at a new intentional community/boarding school: a huge post-apocalyptic wonderland comprised of several <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">huge-former-Christian-camp buildings--among them treehouse cabins a la Peter Pan's lost boys and a large auditorium--being reclaimed by a Rivendell-esque rainforest; garnished with a meadow-turned-edible-garden and two lakes. Then we left and headed vaguely southward governed by our whims, which led us to prodding at farm animals, skinny-dipping on a private beach after dark, geeking out over Salvador Dali originals, late-night-shitty-motel-acrylic-painting, and so on.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">--Working hard on a friend's farm, having good clean scatological fun [like landing on top of a tampon-pooping dog while attempting naked acrobatics], read my first book in a while [Haruki Murakami's novel, <i>The Wind-up Bird Chronicle</i>], reclaimed my sense of personal power through some rather uncomfortable introspection,&nbsp;</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">and had a great Halloween fueled by lipstick, whisky, and the sunset.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 18px;">So it's been a good run. I look forward to having a bit of time to organize my thoughts and work on some writing and music. Been laying low, visiting family and some old friends I haven't allotted enough time for. Next week marks my very last Thai massage class, which I imagine will be somewhat bittersweet.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Etc.&nbsp;</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Alex is right; I ought to get a camera and start taking more photos, rather than relying on whatever it is my smart-phone- or camera-wielding friends elect to record.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><br /></span></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KtN2s46xFKI/Uqzt-1iFo-I/AAAAAAAAAB8/nVGawGL7u5M/s1600/Piddling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KtN2s46xFKI/Uqzt-1iFo-I/AAAAAAAAAB8/nVGawGL7u5M/s320/Piddling.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;">Etc.</span></span></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-1680210168451097382013-08-20T18:26:00.000-07:002013-08-20T18:31:18.379-07:00Off to the playa tomorrow...<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e71SRAsUOSI/UhQW-iEv7_I/AAAAAAAAABk/HXoV0HQ9uRU/s1600/MischiefLab.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a> <br />...with THIS thing...<br /><br /><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e71SRAsUOSI/UhQW-iEv7_I/AAAAAAAAABk/HXoV0HQ9uRU/s1600/MischiefLab.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e71SRAsUOSI/UhQW-iEv7_I/AAAAAAAAABk/HXoV0HQ9uRU/s320/MischiefLab.jpg" width="239" /></a><br /><br />...which will shoot 20-to-30-foot fireballs [not to mention the massive cannon, and the spinner whirligig that'll come out of the very center]...<br /><br />...from atop a 65-foot bamboo tower covered in interactive LEDs [and lasers up top].<br /><br />The contraption in the photo [which has since been embellished/optimized/etc.] was built by a few scruffy kids and myself [about seven-ish of us] up in soggy NorCal.<br /><br />Doing errands to get ready for the Burn today has been a delirious escapade involving a ferris wheel and beanbag fight. <br /><br />Also: it's my birthday today.<br /><br />Also: desert rain.<br /><br />Ciao!Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-90098306058259418032013-08-13T16:34:00.000-07:002014-01-09T15:09:12.142-08:00Early Burn<i>&nbsp;[i.e., The Drunken One-Night Stand that was Doomed from its Inception to Result in Falling Deliriously, Cathartically, Psychedellically in Love] </i><br /><br />August 18th, 2012<br />Black Rock City, NV <br /><br />There’s a pulchritude to brand new words, words that emerge into the sphere of your cognizance as your eyes scan over a page, continuously registering each word with a lazy familiarity, until your fluid commute through symbols is suddenly jarred—momentarily the brakes are slammed before a STOP sign you’d barely noticed was there—and you’re compelled to contemplate, for a moment, this new configuration borne of the alphabet with which you’re generally so familiar. Instead of taking the word in as a whole, you make discrete jumps from letter to letter, piecing the word together, determining its probable pronunciation. The sentence is revisited—you back up a line, maybe a few lines—in search of context that might give form to your shiny new lexical vagary. <br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />That’s how it was when we met.<br /><br />***<br /><br />Granted, the context was just as definitionally elusive as the vagary in question.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />In my memory, everything was bathed in dark red light—though that could just be me getting stuck in the mnemographic darkroom of my hippocampus, in which all memories are too fragile to appear yet outside of a controlled, Luciferian-hued darkness: perhaps the memories were never clear enough to be fully consolidated and subsequently added to the archives for my nostalgic perusal; perhaps I was too drunk or too drugged on enchantment to earn their retention…and yet some backstage part of me knew not to let those memories slip away, even if it meant viewing them in cognitive purgatory, as consciousness-sensitive as an undeveloped photo is light-sensitive; perhaps through will I held onto what should’ve been a blacked-out sort of night as one might will themselves away from waking up, clutching fast to subconsciousness so as to linger in a dream.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Or perhaps everything really was bathed in dark red light. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />The scene is blurred in my recollection—people were everywhere but I was in myself, and otherwise focused sequentially on individuals, as on letters in a new word, never seeing the social scene in its entirety. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />There was fire in plasma-cut burn barrels, there were floating loveseats dangling off the ends of chains, suspended from what must’ve been a sort of ceiling-esque shade structure, though I don’t remember any such structure firsthand and only say that because I remember the seats, and the chains, and it follows that they must’ve been hanging from something.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />There was a lot of leather—I remember the leather rather than the people who were wearing all of it—and a man in studded goggles being dragged on his skateboard by a van from 1955, almost entirely obscured by the resultant dust, as I watched from out of the van’s back window. An older woman with blonde hair and feathered lines in her bubblegum lips and wearing a scanty, large-holed fishnet dress made of what appeared to be bicycle tires had sat down in my lap and purred to me what a pretty kitty I was while burrowing plastic French tips into my hair. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />All of this occurred in a bubble of noise and leatherclad fiction around me—maybe a bubble fifty feet square—beyond the boundaries of which was a flat, vast, and empty flat vast emptiness. Salvador Dali’s desert sans melting clocks and stilt-legged elephants, but ultimately just as surreal.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />By some synaptic misfirings I could no longer remember, I was wearing a suede brown loincloth I’d “found” in the kitchen of my former house in South Lake Tahoe and a denim-and-brocade jacket I’d been given during a photo shoot in Washington, D.C. that appeared to be the result of a Willy-Wonka-meets-Captain-Hook-meets-Michael Jackson-inspired aesthetic, only with a fit conducive to leaving nothing of the wearer’s body to the imagination. As a result, I found myself just as alien as my surroundings if not more so, and in a moment of misandry [after being groped by a man to whom I’d been talking about gold prospecting, admittedly trying to see if I could talk my way into a job operating heavy machinery] decided to drink away my crankiness a la bottomless rum and coke.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Summarily, there was really nothing in my sensory range that could serve as a reference point. Grouchily I drank, because the booze was free and I wasn’t feeling much like an interpersonal sort of being, and booze, at least, was something I could recognize.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />***<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is what I’ve pieced together in a rough chronology:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl clutches drink as if it’s her one anchor to this strange world. Girl rebukes invasively touchy-feely older man, retreats to a section occupied by females, and receives comparable treatment from touchy-feely older women. Girl feels stupid for having worn uncharacteristically skimpy clothing, and forcibly relieves herself of urine in the shadow of a car, while drunken incorporeal notions slosh through her drunken head. Girl feels grumpy, tired, trapped, and uncharacteristically insecure.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Girl notices as group of seemingly happy people who also look out of place enter the premises, wearing jeans and Tshirts rather than blending in with the leatherclad norm. Girl witnesses tall, goofy-haired boy with large smile make deadpan satirical observation about the frivolity of social niceties that his peers fail to laugh at or [ostensibly] understand at all. Girl finds this observation funny; Girl laughs. Boy is stricken by this unexpected laughter and looks bemusedly at Girl. Neither Boy nor Girl gives much conscious thought to the exchange and each proceed with the night without much conscious registry of the other—Boy with his friends [most of whom were later revealed to be on mushrooms], and Girl with her inner bloviating.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl finds herself stuffed into van with throng of other drunk, laughing people—mostly of the abnormally normally-dressed clan she’d admired from afar—and is unconsciously hyperaware of the presence of the aforementioned large-smiled Boy [an awareness unearthed only in her retrospective analyses of the night]. Girl emerges at yet another end-of-the-world, jerryrigged Dalinian bar. Girl finds herself at some point being carried around by the jovial Boy and is surprised to discover she does not feel as if he is commoditizing her so much as simply being jovial. Girl kicks some nondescript would-be-groper in the face as he tries to reach under her loincloth while she is being carried in the arms of Boy; Boy laughs. They separate. Girl drinks more, already having forgotten Boy’s emergence in the vague perceptive whirlpool-dustcloud characteristic of inebriation that has been her perspective for the last several hours.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl sits on the ground in corner, tired but uninspired to hunt through the empty flat vastness for her trailer. Boy and Friend of Boy approach jovially and seat themselves in chairs next to her. Girl expresses that she feels somewhat sick. Boy and Friend laugh and titter in commiseration; Boy scratches Girl’s head as Friend strokes Girl’s hand. Girl is uncharacteristically soothed and even more uncharacteristically unsuspicious by this contact. Inspired and in the spirit of Universal Love, Girl asks Boy and Friend to tell her about themselves. Boy speaks with the sincerity and innocent swagger of a child about his life; Girl finds Boy’s enthusiasm infectious and truly registers his existence for the first time. Girl strokes Friend’s hand with genuine compassion, sensing Friend’s mild envy of Girl’s newfound fascination with Boy.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Friend departs to bathroom.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl and Boy continue conversation. Mostly Girl is feeling misanthropic and vaguely nauseous, and is earnest about these feelings but actively tries not to victimize due to a growing desire for Boy’s esteem. Girl scoots closer to Boy to proffer more of her scalp for him to scratch, as she finds this soothing. Girl lean’s head on Boy’s knee and kisses it in the spirit of Universal Platonic Affection For Strangers, or so she believes. Boy attempts to mask his mild surprise, but is clearly not displeased, and continues scratching Girl’s scalp.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Somewhere in the space of thirty seconds, Girl and Boy find themselves seated in the same clamshell-seat-suspended-from-chains, faces connected in what Girl notes with surprise is the best kiss she’s ever experienced, despite mutual drunkness and stranger-ness and never-having-kissed-each-other-before-ness. Girl cannot remember how kiss came about: when conversation fell away, nor by whom contact was initiated. Friend’s return either never happens, or goes unnoticed.&nbsp;</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Universe becomes contained in chair, Boy and Girl become specimens in a perceptual fishtank looking in, in, inward…and then looking out:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Kiss dissolves. Antagonizing but harmless witty banter commences from both sides. Observations of social surroundings are made. Laughter happens. </div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />Kiss continues. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Cycle repeats for some time. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl makes snarky comment about how Boy has probably been aiming to get lucky through the entirety of the night, and commends him on being a Smooth Operator and disguising his motives better than proximal other men.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Boy halts abruptly. Boy does not deign to good-naturedly humor Girl or dismiss comment with chuckle, but instead calls her out on her arrogance.</div><div class="MsoNormal">“Dude. That is such an entitled 'hot girl' thing to say. So you think I’ve just been trying to get into your pants all night? Because, of course, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everyone</i> in here is trying so hard to fuck you, right? Well, what about you--who says <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you’re </i>automatically entitled to getting in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">mine</i>? You just automatically assume that that's how I want to end the night? Maybe I wanted to go back to camp and party with my friends. Maybe <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">you</i> won’t get lucky because here I was enjoying our conversation, and then you started saying things like that and I realized you were just another 'hot girl'.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Boy appears disillusioned and indignant and, it is worth noting, not the least bit horny.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Girl pauses, stunned. Slowly, Girl weaves her words together.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Thank you…for calling me out. I think most guys—most people—would lower their standards once they’re making out with someone who’s curled in their lap, and just let unsavory words pass over without caring. I mean, most people aren’t seeking virtue in their booty calls. And you’re right…that attitude makes me a hypocrite. It makes me as simple as these men I’ve been getting mad at tonight, and it’s me playing the same game that they are. And if I want to be seen as a human, not a female, I should see other people as humans, not males.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Boy is now the stunned one. Girl kisses boy on the forehead and humbly requests that he follow her to her trailer, adding that she is inviting him not to acquiesce his assumed interest, but because she herself harbors an independent interest. However, if Boy accepts he must first help her find a secluded patch of desert upon which to urinate unseen.</div><div class="MsoNormal">Boy exhibits signature large smile in sheepish agreement. Kissing continues until Girl’s bladder approaches critical pressure. Girl takes Boy's hand and they stand; the sudden reemergence into a Universe outside Adam-Eve-ecosystem they’d created renders her momentarily shocked and unsteady, abruptly woken into a dark red dream. Girl and Boy exit.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">“Fuck, it’s cold. Let’s walk faster.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“You’re cold? I’m wearing fucking skivvies and I feel great!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“You’re wearing a liquid blanket.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“You’re fucking drunk,<i> too!</i>”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“So where’s this <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">trailer, </i>fancypants?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“You know what? That’s a really good question…”<br /><br />&nbsp;“...”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“And strictly speaking it wouldn’t be fancypants so much as <i>no</i>-pants.”<br /><br />“Oh, look! Blinking light things—I think those are people coming towards us.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Hey, good call….Excuse me! Hey—Excuse me! Do you know where the Commissary is?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />&nbsp;“Yeah, it’s over that way.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Holy shit, thank you so much."</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“No problem, kids. We’re not really here, after all. You're just tripping balls.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />&nbsp;“What?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“We’re in your imaaaginaaaation!”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">Cackling exhaustedly as the figments of their imagination bide them goodnight and pass them by, Boy and Girl shuffle in the direction of a warm indoor space. Boy acknowledges his approval in the form of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Whoa</i>, followed by, “This sleeps like six people…what the fuck, DPW just gave this to you?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“For right now, I guess. But hang on, I have to pee…”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl gets distracted from her quest to pee and instead jumps onto Boy, kissing his face in a display of transcasual affection. Boy laughs, but not uncomfortably.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl flaunts ability to pee standing up and stubs her toe on the skeleton of a disassembled geodesic dome. Toe bleeds, but not profusely. Boy laughs again, but not belittlingly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Girl flatulates theatrically. Boy makes a tasteful joke involving bodily fluids. Banter continues in this high-brow fashion for some time and both parties exercise poker faces amidst vague whirlwind of incensed libido. Girl gets antsy.<br /><br />"HEY."<br /><br />"WHAT."<br /><br />"So, do you want to have sex tonight?"<br /><br />Boy considers.<br /><br />"Of course I do."</div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-67705586172807644172013-08-06T19:21:00.001-07:002013-08-06T21:48:51.843-07:00Rebelle Society DebutThe other week, I submitted some of my writing for the very first time ever.<br /><br />As of yesterday, my article is <a href="http://www.rebellesociety.com/2013/08/05/outrageously-alive-the-art-of-letting-life-chew-you-up/" target="_blank">live at Rebelle Society</a>. Stoked. To say the least. 8]<br /><br />Beginner's luck, maybe. I hope not. At any rate, I'm beginning to approach this whole Writing Thing with a newfound sense of possibility, and am broiling up several more pieces for submission. Yee.<br /><br />That being said, this month is going to be sort of crazy. Currently stationed in a loft in a warehouse/studio doohickey learning pyrotechnics, and the succeeding weeks don't look as if they'll slow down for a while. As per usual-ish.Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-22718563976790596082013-07-24T22:13:00.000-07:002013-07-30T22:17:06.200-07:00Coming Home<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Arial; panose-1:2 11 6 4 2 2 2 2 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} span.il {mso-style-name:il;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></style> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">April 26th, 2012</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Bridgeport, CA </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">For me, being in the desert is an exercise in sensory enhancement by means of sensory deprivation. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At first, nothing is striking. There’s some sagebrush, cricket noises. Everything seems a bit monochromatic. Then hits a point when, suddenly, those mountains in the distant look purple, green, that plateau is a vibrant red, those dunes a creamier yellow, and the bushes are blue amidst pink and orange stones. There’s music in the wind—a tinkling. And the smells. Clean, redeeming smells—the heady, violet smell of succulent shade-dwelling sage.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whenever I’m sitting in some apartment, some coffee shop, some subway, and I dig into the archives of my memory and pull anything out labeled “desert”, the memories are huge. They’re not intricate, but they’re enormous—they take up more space, project onto a larger screen. The sky is always bigger, my clothes always billowing cinematically in the wind like out of some trendy movie with a soundtrack by some up-and-coming singer-songwriter with thick glasses and tight pants from some city in the Midwest—in my memory there’s practically lens flare. Desert memories age well.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">***</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I spent the morning running around the desert with him, clambering over boulders, chasing lizards and snakes in wind so strong I was lifted off my feet a couple times. At one point I found a pale pink desert rose—it had turned out to be fake, but it was a desert rose anyway by virtue of my finding it, I decided.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We didn’t touch each other, didn’t curl up together amidst the rocks or hold hands. He wasn’t much for touching.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But for once—for the first time, probably—we were enjoying this enchanted landscape together, without his single-minded obsession over climbing. Granted, it might’ve only been because the wind was too strong to make climbing a palatable option, but he was feeling the magic with me anyway, and that was what mattered.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I love this wind.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“Do you?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“I don’t know, strong warm wind kind of just feels like an affirmation. It instills this sense of transformation and movement in me—like a propulsion into the next chapter. And it makes me feel more aware—of my surroundings, of my body. It turns me on at least as much as any man has.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">“…Totally.” He didn’t get it. I’d gotten used to this.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">***</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He gave me a piece of homework, right before I left.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"I wrote you a letter before we were together. During the dark part. It was maybe a year and a half ago and I was driving from Bishop to Vegas and passed through Furnace Creek in Death Valley. I hid it under a large rock--you're going to go through Furnace Creek, and after you pass it there'll be a small green sign on your right, telling you you're one hundred feet below sea level. That's where I left it. Go see if it's still there." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He showed me on one of the road maps he'd scrounged up for my journey; he’d made a big motherly fuss over me before I could wiggle my way out, making sure I had everything I might need.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We were in the Vons parking lot in Bishop, CA, and he completely forgot that he hates PDA for a second…for a few seconds.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He handed me the maps, broke away reluctantly, and said, "Go be free."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I smiled, pulled him in gently by his curly hair and whispered carelessly, "I'll come back." </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And that was it. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">He smiled at me and nodded, but when he turned around and walked back to his car there was a quality to his body language implying he was in a state of saving-face-in-front-of-the-firing-squad. Despite our historical inability to relate to one another, on this particular day he understood me better than I understood myself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">That was it; I just didn’t know it yet.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">***</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Plugging in my inverter and slipping off my dress and my shoes as I speed down the 395, I'm finally home again. For <span class="il">me</span>, home is breaking inertia--moving when I'm stagnant, resting once I'm spent.</span> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Like everyone else, I have my weaker moments. Sometimes I go crazy, stop thinking straight, and overreact towards—even past—the point of nervous breakdown. Sometimes I’m prone to self-pity, that fat cannibalistic luxury the most privileged of us beset upon ourselves. And that’s what uncertainty is so good at curing—when you’ve got to make decisions and take things into your own hands, you don’t have time to sit in a masturbatory pool of tears no matter how sensitive or weak you’re feeling.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I haven’t been around for very long, but I’ve been around long enough to know that the victimization we seem to so sanction as a culture hasn’t really gotten anyone shit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sure, it might win you a court case, get you a sympathy fuck and sometimes a job. On occasion it’ll get you rich and famous.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">But it won’t <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really </i>get you shit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I turn left onto the 190, windows down, butt naked, wet with adrenaline and testosterone. The wind rocks my car harder the faster I go, and at a few points I feel weightless. I'm not in a car, but a helpless plastic box of a car, a paper boat, a cheap tent. Up ahead in the distance, torrential clouds of sand completely blacken out large patches of Death Valley--right in the direction I'm headed. The sun's going down and an especially furious bit of wind has me drifting into the wrong lane, so I go faster. For some reason, I feel close to death--not as if I'm in danger of dying, but more so that I'm being overtaken by one of those moments when life feels too big for a mere mortal to contain without blowing a fuse, one of those moments when life's fucking me rough in ten thousand ways at once with sensory overload and existential euphoria and there's not a damn thing I can do to stop it, one of those moments when I'm just moving way too damn fast to catch up with myself.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Propping my left leg up on my dashboard, I focus on my right foot and try to press my gas pedal down through the bottom of my car, feeling as sprung and turned on as any pretty little bygone man ever got me.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Dark dust clouds lay just ahead spatially, darkness of night lay just ahead on the axis of time. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Once again approaching an edge of the world, I drive into a remote, service-free expanse feeling at once freed in the knowledge that if anything bad were to happen to me, I’ll be unable to call for help. It’s this knowledge that helps force into me a true presence of being. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A vague thrill, a latent fear, being overwhelmed in each passing moment. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The temperature outside reads sixty-three degrees Fahrenheit.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">In a flash I’m flying past the prettiest sand dune I’ve ever seen, though of course it also looks like every other sand dune on Earth. Something about it compels me, this particular innocuous, round lump of sand—perhaps only as arbitrary as the particular attractions we may find in the curve of a particular shoulder, a particular pair of lips, a particular set of eyelashes or forearms or breasts.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">After ten seconds’ hesitation, a sense of urgency even greater than the urgency pulling me towards my next rest stop compels me to flip a bitch and detour back to it. My mind shut off, running on some ulterior automatic mode, I slam the car door shut and emerge from my capsule, caressed in the spiced orange rays of the setting sun. Shoes in one hand, keys in another, I sprint across the street, across the sage-dotted sand, and collapse naked into my dune.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It’s a magestic thing, under the sun. The sand is bracingly warm and cool, soft fragments of hard stone, and compulsively I crawl up to the top, rushing until I’m short of breath, enjoying the sensation of my breathing as it snatches frantically in the air. Across the top I sprawl, opening my body to the sky, and roll over to watch the sand drip down like sheets of honey as my body disturbs it. Lazily I follow the path of a spider for a few moments as it ascends the dune after me. Swiftly embedding the heel of my palm into the sand again, I send another of these sheets down to meet the spider and obstruct its path—but the spider exceeds my expectations and only runs faster, leaping up onto the descending sheet and running atop it rather than allowing itself to be swallowed by it and carried back to the bottom. I smile at the small bug’s perseverance, then roll down the hill myself, plating my body in a fine coat of sand that shakes off dryly by the time I’ve run all the way back to my car.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I let the door hang open and lean my seat back, taking a moment to bask in my post-coital daze before continuing onward.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">An hour later, sudden darkness falls. Like clockwork, the wind starts up, visible, even opaque, painting in 3-D with the sand it carried—little abstract pictures brought to life by the lonely beams of my headlights.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Everything changes in the dark, and I’m now in the belly of some merciless beast—a ghost in a capsule, quietly trying to make my way through, tensing my gut and holding my breath in hopes it’ll save me from detection by the nebulous dark patrollers of my imagination.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Steadily the thermometer creeps up as the night deepens—the thermometer reads eighty-one degrees. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Such is the nocturnal sorcery of Death Valley.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">***</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I made it to Furnace Creek—the place he’d designated for his letter. I’d even found the rocks he’d described. However, I’d also found an unexpected addition, hinting to me what I’d find before I had a chance to look, in the form of another rock lying very pointedly on top. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The letter was gone. I contented myself with the thought that the anonymous rock-adder had found it and stolen it for themselves as some precious relic.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Somehow, this struck me as a cleaner resolution than if I’d found it. After all, that letter was an artifact marking the start of a dark age of love synthesized in hatred. I continued on—car thermometer now reading ninety-eight degrees—disappointed on the surface, but leaking out a small glimmer of a smile that came from somewhere deeper.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Not for a moment during my drive was I able to shake that feeling of intimacy with something dark and nameless, that feeling of proximity with the underside of consciousness, some world we may only be privy to in dreams of death. I drifted in and out of thought and was eventually jolted out of my reverie when I slammed on my brakes to avoid hitting a sign marking the end of my road, and the start of a fork that would lead me back into the land of the living—Las Vegas, in this case. I took a right and followed the directions through unfamiliar roads to the house of a girl whose handwriting I knew better than her face, where I'd spend the next night or two. Paradoxically, it struck me that after a long winter, I was returning home.</span></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-71450581023333016262013-07-10T19:58:00.000-07:002013-11-14T11:37:29.851-08:00Jacuzzings<style><!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-parent:""; margin:0in; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page Section1 {size:8.5in 11.0in; margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in; mso-header-margin:.5in; mso-footer-margin:.5in; mso-paper-source:0;} div.Section1 {page:Section1;} --></style> <br />As I sang Lhasa’s song I thought, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">It’s such a strange miracle that we can create something so profound and beautiful that it outlives us…that it almost ceases to be ours. At least, it does if our work is great enough.</i> <br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br />To me, Lhasa existed only in the context of her music, to me she’s an idea, someone now dead who once crooned contralto syrup. But she was once a woman who’d probably had her share of secrets and neuroses and unrequited loves—of cruelty, pettiness, regrets, humiliations, narcissism, humbling moments, maybe moments of transcendence, maybe nervous breakdowns. She was once a woman who shat and farted and possibly snored or drooled in her sleep, a woman who’d caught the flu, who’d maybe at some point questioned God or Purpose or Love or Free Will. Or perhaps she was just a Plain Jane Doe who happened to be gifted with a haunting voice. In any case, she’s no longer any of those things, but there I was, softly singing Spanish syllables as Alex broke his own stillness with a sudden exhalation of nitrous oxide, his eyes closed and his head leaned back, exposing his throat to the mostly-full now-waning moon, one hand sticking out of the bubbling-glittering hot water that came up past our chests, long fingers curled gently as if around some giant maternal finger. Head back in a moment of complete surrender I felt privileged to witness, he sat very still as he always did when doing Whip-Its, a stark contrast to my own behavior under their influence.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Under the moonlight and the patio roofing’s shadows, Alex’s body was a cold thing—frozen milk, smooth and devoid of the blemishes and landmarks that betray us as organic creatures. A blue configuration of marble hacked by the anonymous criss-crossing shadows of Night. Though I tend to search obsessively for the base and animal in others, somehow, in all his present sterility, he rendered me a Pygmalion. The cavity of his collarbone was full of the moon, a pool of iridescent liquid. After a moment he turned into the shadow and became a silhouette, his own shadow-self, a palimpsest of the Daytime, real-life waking version, and with the quietest of sounds tasted and then exhaled a cloud of cigar smoke, expired a white ghost of the breath that had once been life-giving oxygen until his body had drained it in hunger. We borrow life from the air around us, then dispose it in satiety, suckling the Universe long after we’ve been weaned from our flesh-and-blood mothers.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Did you know that inspiration can also mean inhalation, and expiration can mean exhalation?”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />***<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;Earlier that night we’d watched Akira Kurosawa’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dreams</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“There’s such a different narrative style—a lot of Japanese storytelling seems to be that way. Lots of moments, images. Beginnings, and fragments of dialogue, snapshots. That’s sort of more how my mind works. That’s sort of what keeps me from writing, I guess—I feel like I need to draw up something cohesive, bookended within a beginning and an end. Linear, for the most part—even if it’s told out of order, there’s ultimately a discernable timeline. But I can’t churn out that Hero’s Journey stuff. I wander in other directions, or I don’t have a resolution to a beginning, or I have a scene, a moment, a vignette…that I don’t want to have to explain with loads of context and backstory, and that I don’t want to justify with a resolution. The former seems to me like explaining all the funny out of a joke someone didn’t get, or talking all the magic out of a dream or a mystical experience. And the latter feels to me like turning your work into an advertisement, with some vested interest, some finger-wagging moral at the end that the reader is supposed to come away with, says you. Anyway, life isn’t like that. I didn’t set out on one journey and then resolve it up neatly just on time for the sequel—the strings of my life all mesh into each other in this gnarled, overlapping tangle of causality and coincidence.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Just write that, then.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“But people want stories. American people, anyway. If I don’t throw in a plot-twist after some build-up, I’m being lazy.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Fuck that. Just write, like you do. A page, or however much. Then write some more. Then some more. Then call it a book when it’s long enough.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“That’s cheating.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“Says who? Why don’t you just write without being preoccupied with whether it’s marketable? That’s when your stuff is going to be at its best, anyway. I think you can make a living as a writer, easy. But you can make a living a million other ways. You, specifically. So you don’t need to conform to the market.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />***<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">&nbsp;I put out our cigar and extended my legs through the wiggling water towards Alex’s feet, instinctively soldering a physical link across the infinite gap that exists between two people by default.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />“It’s funny, but I feel closest to you at night—when it’s hardest to see you, when the lights are out, except possibly for the moon.<br /><br />“But I guess it makes sense. Night—true night, like this, quiet and receptive—it’s when we can kind of come out. When we’re not distracted by all the things we’re doing and being and thinking under the sun’s surveillance. It’s like going backstage—backstage behind the production of everyday life, of our social personas and our relationships and roles and manners and mannerisms. It’s when we can wipe off the stage makeup and be honest with ourselves about who we are, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">really </i>honest, and possibly extend that into being honest with someone else. It’s when true introspection, true simplicity, true transcendance, true strength, and true experience can creep up from underneath our minds—the ideas, agendas, goals, anxieties. It’s when we can return to the womb, to death, to intangibility and insentience—pre-consciousness.</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;"><br />“But-um, I feel kind of dreamy now. Maybe that’s why I felt so close to you, because a lot of the time we’d sort of be there together. In this surreal place, at night, and there’d be so much and so many people, but a lot of the time we’d just be alone together, and I felt like I was dreaming—but the next day I’d wake up and know you’d been in the dream with me, and you’d remember it too. That’s got to bring people together…I mean, think of how much of our lives we spend dreaming, whether we remember it or not. You can never really share a dream with someone. People sometimes feel really compelled to try—and no one REALLY gives a shit, because it wasn’t their dream, and anyway people suck balls at explaining their dreams. Like, ‘And YOU were there, and then I was a dolphin, and then I was YOU and there was this purple-ness…’. But think. To have a dream and wake up next to someone knowing they were THERE, you don’t have to try to explain it. I think that’s a lot of what drives people to wanting to trip together. But-um, a lot of those nights felt like that, when we met. The first night I met you and then I woke up and you were still there, I was facing the back of some strange boy in my bed, except I didn’t have to shudder and quietly jump out of bed and hope you’d leave soon—because whoever you were, you’d been in the same dream with me.”</div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-36960655119666957912013-06-26T20:57:00.000-07:002013-07-30T20:59:32.873-07:00So, I Just Googled Myself......and I found <a href="http://thoughtscream.wordpress.com/2009/11/12/ph-ds-are-only-worth-the-person-backing-them/" target="_blank">this very old, very silly post</a> a friend of mine had thrown up regarding an email exchange between myself and a former professor several years ago [i.e., 2009].<br /><br />There's really no good reason to share it now, other than to stoke my own nostalgia. Oh, how different my world was then. 8PBumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-76331285398480599852013-06-12T20:38:00.000-07:002013-11-29T16:35:20.291-08:00My First Time with the DesertMarch 5th, 2012<br />Bishop, CA<br /><br />&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; My body a fluid, cutting through the air—the air now tangible matter with a weight and pressure consciously felt—oozing through space. With this new, distinct feeling of flow, I walk through the volcanic tablelands before dusk, surrounded by discrete, crisp, particular sounds devoid of reverb—the flap of a crow flying fifty feet away, the clinking crackling pieces of volcanic tuff wiggling and scraping under the gentle weight of my steps.<br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As I look around me, size loses relevance. The wrinkles in the rolling hills are the same crows feet that show up in his otherwise youthful face during those rare moments when he’s really happy to see me and not concerned with masking or moderating his display of it. The uniformly wide crack I have to step over now is as large as all the canyons at which I’ve pulled over while driving by, in order to stand over them and be engulfed in the terrifying magnetism of their endless drop-offs—a force I had to be consciously alert of and resistant to in order not to fall, jump, or fly.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I’m miniscule, walking across this expansive desert plateau, but I’m enormous, overlooking the canyon of boulders below, the little moving figures of climbers in their Technicolor tank tops and fleece layers, masquerading as turtles with green and black and red mattresses on their backs.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">An old man in a baseball cap, fleece, and cargo shorts walks back to his truck, his big black dog in tow. The man appears stoop-shouldered and goofy-brittle, but hurls a large crash pad into the bed of his truck with ease. I’ve seen the pair of them here before, months ago, but it’s strange that I remember. Since I started branching out I’ve seen countless old men wielding crash pads, dogs, and trucks, and they all smoosh into an unfocused miasma in my memory—perhaps resurfacing only as cast members in my dreams, if the adage is true that we only ever dream up faces we’ve glimpsed awake, if only in passing.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">The air here is seductive. Succulent, almost purplish sagebrush and dry open space. The smell wrenches my chest open and pulls my crooked ribcage into the sun. So begins my love affair with the desert.</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">*** </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Last night, I was three and a half hours away. One of the Argentinian girls from Sierra, the Tahoe ski resort I’d face-planted into working for, invited me to a party, and I went alone. So many people, so close that I couldn't walk across a room and breathe at the same time, but so separate. Such a tasteless atmosphere of desperation and loneliness. More than once, I found myself boxed into a corner by some liquor-sloshed and coked-up someone—usually some guy or other from Kirkwood—and he needed me to know about every win and loss he'd experienced at the casinos this season, and he needed to know why he wasn't welcome to fall on me drunk in an attempted kiss, and he needed to know how to change my answer to "What are you doing later?" from "Going home to a boy," into something more favorable to his interests. I ran into my coworker Holly, who laid kisses on me and clutched me like a scared child with an oblivious look on her face, of the sort that suggested oblivion wasn't somewhere she was enjoying after all. Eventually I saw her drink the likely-drugged mixed concoction one of the oafs from Kirkwood had been angrily pushing on me for the last hour or two.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I was so far away from everyone that night. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">*** </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Tonight, the car jangles clumsily over nondescript dirt roads as we search for an unoccupied hot spring. This part is always something of an aimless quest—without quite knowing where to look, we turn on the brights and poke around wherever there’s somewhat of a turnoff, and sooner or later something pops into the tunnel-vision scope of our headlights, always bringing with its emergence the welcoming impression that it, the particular pool we’ve just found, is precisely the perfect one for the evening.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Walking to the Wild Willies tub of Whitmore Hot Springs underneath the full moon on a crisp pre-storm night feels like walking across the expanses between the worlds we visit in dreams. The wind paints us in goosebumps as we tread over our crisp moon shadows on a stone-lined gravel path through clustered sagebrush and grasses, then ivory-colored boardwalk over stumpy rolling sand dunes until we come across the tub, manmade but irregularly rounded and upholstered in algae. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I turn to him; he’s clutching a bottle of barley wine that we picked up from the market in town.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“So what is it for you about climbing? You’re better at skateboarding and have been snowboarding for way longer. Why climbing, in particular?”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">I’ve asked him this question a million times and never gotten a satisfactory answer, but tonight I feel like asking again, anyway.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He thinks it over.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“It’s the group dynamic that climbing makes possible…I didn’t get it snowboarding, or skateboarding. Especially with bouldering, it’s when someone’s spotting you on some sketch highball and they’re there with you. Their breathing matches yours, they know exactly when you’re scared, pumping out, unstable, there’s a level of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">attention.</i> Empathy that I don’t find anywhere else. I’m not a very empathetic person and you know that, but when I’m climbing with other people who are as stoked on it as I am, the connection is real, even if we were strangers a few minutes ago. I'm more aware of everything and it brings me into my emotions...while other people are there. It's pretty much the only time that happens with me.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“Almost sounds like Tantric sex.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He thinks it over.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">“Sure.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><br />***<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Tantric climbing.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">He’s always full of cheesy New Age sounding hokum, especially in relation to activities to which the application of such hokum seems even more frivolous than it would otherwise—things like cleaning out the car, or scooting his ass up large igneous rocks clumped together in a canyon.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">And as far as climbing goes, I’ve turned into much more of an incidental climber since I began dating one. I’ll spot a line that looks pretty, challenging, and vaguely doable, play on it a while, then scamper off in favor of harassing the local flora and fauna [when it comes to any of the climbing destinations I’ve visited, I tend to be more familiar with which bugs populate each than with which types of rock its climbing is comprised]. Exerting myself out in beautiful, open desert/mountains/canyon means I usually want sex at some point, too—usually at a point when he’s too focused on some rock to be remotely interested. Consequently, when I have paid attention to him as he was climbing, the effect has been more agitating than meditative.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">However, this morning, I try it—Tantric spotting. I watch the muscles in his arms wake up—some of them having been out of commission for a while, now crackling into wakefulness like newly-opened glow sticks. The activity spreads into his fingers. I’ve always been attracted to hands. His in particular are extremely knobbly, but strangely elegant. [I once asked him what his favorite body part was, and he told me it was his wrists and used that word to describe them—“elegant”]. More so than other climbers I know, he tends to get very Zen-ified, pre-climb. He wraps his hands around the starting holds with a deliberation I used to wish he’d apply in contexts other than climbing, and I’m able to feel the rock in my hands—the texture of the rock and the coolness it takes in the shade, the slight pain of its shards on his skin [“slight” because it’s only the beginning of the day] and the stress on his finger joints as he weights his hands and sticks his rubber-bound feet onto two miniscule crystals, banking on friction and the exact angle of his pressure. His back tenses on one side, one shoulder, and I notice. My breathing matches his. My calm anticipation matches his.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">We’re in a bit of a cave—a crisp line delineating shade from sun. Gravel, sandy sagebrush—some of it almost purple, it’s so lushly rain-fed—and lots of washed-out orange.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Yawning latissimus dorsi, deltoid dry-humping trapezius. Around each scapula bulge the muscles of his rotator cuff—supraspinatus, subscapularis, infraspinatus, teres minor, all of them concentrating as he lifts a whittled arm, clavicle high-fiving his sternocleidomastoid, forming a hollow underneath his throat from which I’ve taken drinks of river water and sweat. I can feel his right forearm tire out, the usually bulging veins deliquesce back into his arm, thirsty for blood, and in a moment he’s going to switch hands and give that arm a good shake, letting it dangle for a moment until his heart pumps new life into it.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As the thought crosses my mind, he switches hands.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Cheeseburger birds in the distance. I’ve forgotten their “real” name and their appearance; both were drab. I first heard them in Kings Canyon and they make their distinctive call across the Sierra when it’s sunny out: “Cheeeeseburger.”&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As I'm watching him, I realize that the moment really isn't about him at all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Right now, this is my own corner of the universe. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><br />***<br /><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Alone at the base of the canyon writing all of this down, I look into the approaching dust storm and it’s like that haze added to dream scenes in movies—what’s beyond the scope of your tunnel-vision within that fabricated dream. That blank white void not of the unknown, but of the nonexistent. I’ve broken free of some natural law, like I’m finally staring straight-faced into my peripheral vision.&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">As a rule, I’m an egomaniacal and strong-willed creature—in my own mind my life tends to hold an importance unparalleled by all of human history and all of the cosmos. I’m a fighter and scared shitless of the idea that I could run out of lucky breaks and stop crawling unharmed from piles of rubble and stupid risks, or else that this body and this mind that I’ve spent my whole life learning to love and cultivate could turn on me, sabotage me, and begin to decay while I’m still occupying them. I’m young and hard and beautiful and convinced for today that I’m immortal.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .1pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: .1pt; mso-para-margin-bottom: .01gd; mso-para-margin-left: 0in; mso-para-margin-right: 0in; mso-para-margin-top: .01gd; text-indent: .5in;"><span style="font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-family: &quot;Times New Roman&quot;; mso-bidi-font-size: 10.0pt;">Still, looking into the dreamscape bleeding like an inkblot across perceptual law into my waking hours, I could die now with no indignation, with body limpid and eyes glassed.</span></div>Bumpkin Wolfganghttps://plus.google.com/117526766296267733631noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3188121927031735720.post-63925729178083798192013-05-29T20:45:00.000-07:002013-07-30T22:26:04.939-07:00Hi. Who am I?By way of introduction: I grew up sheltered and bored in the suburbs, with no particular accomplishments, no street smarts, a slew of behavioral issues, and negligible first-hand exposure to big cities, to the outdoors, to traveling, to poverty, or to anything else involving a modicum either of self-sufficiency or of emotional fortitude. I have no college degree, and I have never worked at any job for more than eight straight months before quitting or taking a break.<br /><br />I’ve been on the road—or else in between airports–since November, 2010. Before November, I spent six months living in a tent at 11,500 feet in the wilderness area of Kings Canyon National Park doing trail construction—but that’s another story, which I’m sure I’ll get to at some point. Since November, I haven’t spent more than two straight weeks in any one place.<br /><br />No, I am not a trust fund hippie. All of this is paid for with money I have been making along the way, starting from what was a de facto dried-up bank account.<br /><br />I don’t receive checks from my parents. I don’t receive checks from the government. I am not part of a profitable crime syndicate, to my knowledge.<br /><br />Instead, I pay my own way, capitalize on non-monetary perks, don’t pay for what I don’t have to pay for, and otherwise live pretty comfortably as what is colloquially known as a dirtbag.<br /><br />And I've created this little corner of the Internet to deposit a lot of the thoughts, memories, and ideas that clog up my limited cerebral real estate. Cheers.Mafgynoreply@blogger.com0